http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=90598
My family always began the Christmas celebration on Dec. 24, a day before it is celebrated in most Western nations. That is because my father was Danish, and in Denmark the holiday is celebrated from Dec. 24-26.
The best part about this was we were allowed to open our presents the night before all our friends. The Christmas tree would go up in a corner of the living room at the beginning of December, and slowly more and more presents would surround it.
My three sisters, one brother and I spent many hours sitting in the living room “present watching” during those weeks before Christmas. My mother used to make a circle of pine branches, put four candles in it, and hang it above the kitchen table. Four Sundays before Christmas one candle was lit. The next Sunday two, the Sunday after that three, and on Christmas Day all four.
On the night of Dec. 24 I, as the oldest boy, would sit under the tree and pass the presents out to my youngest sister. She then gave them to the people they were for.
We ate two Christmas dinners, one on the 24th and another on the 25th – often with friends. The main course would be either roast chicken or roast pork with apple sauce, and white wine for the adults.
This would be followed by a traditional Danish rice dessert with an almond hidden in it. There was an extra present for the person who found the almond in their dessert.
Our Christmas celebrations were also different in another way. Because we lived in New Zealand, the Christmas was in summer. Instead of snow, we always had hot weather and sunshine.
This is the reverse of the original purpose of the holiday. In fact, the word “holiday” comes from “holy (religious) day,” but the celebration is older than Christianity.
It began thousands of years ago as the celebration of the Winter Solstice, or shortest day of the year. The ancient Babylonians celebrated the birth of the queen of heaven at that time, the Egyptians celebrated the birth of the son of Isis, and the Arabs celebrated the birth of the moon.
The Romans celebrated Saturn, the god of agriculture. They believed the sun was born on the shortest day of the year. The emperor Constantine celebrated this way – before he became a Christian.
As Christianity spread into Europe the old beliefs were replaced and people began to celebrate the birth of Jesus instead. But still they have Father Christmas, the fat man in the red suit who rides across the sky, representing the disappearing sun.
But now Father Christmas is thought to be the same person as Santa Claus, who many people believe was “Nicholas of Patara.” He came from a village in the south of Turkey 1,700 years ago. Jesus told him to sell his possessions and give money to poor people, and he spent the rest of his life doing this.
Monday, December 24, 2007
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Adventures of an English Teacher
For Turkish Daily News http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=89204
In 1999, bored with life as a journalist in rural New Zealand, I came to Europe looking for adventure. I started in Spain, because my English uncle had a house in the southern city of Malaga. I did not speak Spanish, however, and could not find work.
After three months my savings were low. I decided to join my brother, a photographer in London, taking the bus all the way from Malaga.
The day after arriving in England I had a job at a holiday village on the Isle of Wight, off the southern coast near Portsmouth. I later worked in bars on the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea, Jersey in the Channel Islands off France, and near the city of Rugby in central England.
During this time, nine months, I traveled to Scotland and Wales, and also to Denmark and Norway to meet, for the first time, my father's family.
It was in the Guardian newspaper that I saw an advertisement for people to train to become English teachers. I was accepted for the course, which was inMadrid, and returned to Spain a year after arriving there for the first time.
I spent the next nine months working in Jaen, a small olive-growing city between Cordoba and Granada. There were few tourists, so it was a perfect place to learn Spanish. But it was a little boring, and there was no teaching work in the summer. So I looked on the Internet and got a summer teaching job in St Petersburg.
I traveled to Russia by train and bus, all the way from southern Spain. It took three days. This was in 2001 and Russia seemed less modern and organized than Spain. But the students were hard working and quick to learn.
On Sept. 11, 2001, one of the students told us about the terrorist attacks in America. She had seen it on the television news and we spent the class talking about it.
I flew back to Spain from Finland and worked for nine months in Vitoria, the capital of the Basque Country in the north. Vitoria is a nice little city, but theweather was not good. Why come to Spain for English weather? I thought.
In 2002 I moved to Barcelona and stayed there for the next three years. Barcelona is a beautiful city with great beaches and fantastic architecture. I thought I would never leave. But I continued to work on nine-month contracts and needed work in the summers. In 2003 I went to Shanghai, China for two months.
Shanghai is a big city, which makes Istanbul's traffic problems seem small. Think of Maslak or Taksim with the addition of thousands of rickshaws and bicycles! But the people were very friendly and everything was so cheap.
I saved enough money for a holiday in Rome afterward, and was lucky enough to see Pope John Paul II in the Vatican City. He was very old and not well, but he came outside on a hot day and spoke to us in several different languages.
After another nine months in Barcelona I went to London and spent six weeks teaching mostly Italian teenagers at the University of Greenwich. We showed them around the city in the afternoons and played football with them in the evenings.
I had a lot of savings the next summer and decided I wanted to visit Turkey, a liberal Muslim country with a lot of history and culture. I thought that it would be another interesting experience, like Russia and China, and then I would return to Barcelona.
However, I soon fell in love with Istanbul. In fact, during the past two-and-a-half years I have spent more time in Turkey than in Spain!
I am also learning the language – slowly. It is more difficult for me than Spanish, which has a similar vocabulary to English.
From Turkey I have traveled to Athens and three Greek Islands, and also to Bulgaria, Romania, Egypt and Syria. In January I plan to visit India.
I never thought, when I left New Zealand in 1999, that I would have so many opportunities and be able to see so much. But it all became possible after I got my English teaching certificate in Madrid seven-and-a-half years ago.
In 1999, bored with life as a journalist in rural New Zealand, I came to Europe looking for adventure. I started in Spain, because my English uncle had a house in the southern city of Malaga. I did not speak Spanish, however, and could not find work.
After three months my savings were low. I decided to join my brother, a photographer in London, taking the bus all the way from Malaga.
The day after arriving in England I had a job at a holiday village on the Isle of Wight, off the southern coast near Portsmouth. I later worked in bars on the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea, Jersey in the Channel Islands off France, and near the city of Rugby in central England.
During this time, nine months, I traveled to Scotland and Wales, and also to Denmark and Norway to meet, for the first time, my father's family.
It was in the Guardian newspaper that I saw an advertisement for people to train to become English teachers. I was accepted for the course, which was inMadrid, and returned to Spain a year after arriving there for the first time.
I spent the next nine months working in Jaen, a small olive-growing city between Cordoba and Granada. There were few tourists, so it was a perfect place to learn Spanish. But it was a little boring, and there was no teaching work in the summer. So I looked on the Internet and got a summer teaching job in St Petersburg.
I traveled to Russia by train and bus, all the way from southern Spain. It took three days. This was in 2001 and Russia seemed less modern and organized than Spain. But the students were hard working and quick to learn.
On Sept. 11, 2001, one of the students told us about the terrorist attacks in America. She had seen it on the television news and we spent the class talking about it.
I flew back to Spain from Finland and worked for nine months in Vitoria, the capital of the Basque Country in the north. Vitoria is a nice little city, but theweather was not good. Why come to Spain for English weather? I thought.
In 2002 I moved to Barcelona and stayed there for the next three years. Barcelona is a beautiful city with great beaches and fantastic architecture. I thought I would never leave. But I continued to work on nine-month contracts and needed work in the summers. In 2003 I went to Shanghai, China for two months.
Shanghai is a big city, which makes Istanbul's traffic problems seem small. Think of Maslak or Taksim with the addition of thousands of rickshaws and bicycles! But the people were very friendly and everything was so cheap.
I saved enough money for a holiday in Rome afterward, and was lucky enough to see Pope John Paul II in the Vatican City. He was very old and not well, but he came outside on a hot day and spoke to us in several different languages.
After another nine months in Barcelona I went to London and spent six weeks teaching mostly Italian teenagers at the University of Greenwich. We showed them around the city in the afternoons and played football with them in the evenings.
I had a lot of savings the next summer and decided I wanted to visit Turkey, a liberal Muslim country with a lot of history and culture. I thought that it would be another interesting experience, like Russia and China, and then I would return to Barcelona.
However, I soon fell in love with Istanbul. In fact, during the past two-and-a-half years I have spent more time in Turkey than in Spain!
I am also learning the language – slowly. It is more difficult for me than Spanish, which has a similar vocabulary to English.
From Turkey I have traveled to Athens and three Greek Islands, and also to Bulgaria, Romania, Egypt and Syria. In January I plan to visit India.
I never thought, when I left New Zealand in 1999, that I would have so many opportunities and be able to see so much. But it all became possible after I got my English teaching certificate in Madrid seven-and-a-half years ago.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
The Turks & the Spanish
For the Turkish Daily News:
http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=88914
INTERMEDIATE
The Turks and the Spanish
A thousand years ago Turkey was Christian and Spainwas Muslim.They are two nations with fascinating histories andrich cultures. That's why I have spent most of thepast nine years living in them.
At one time part of Spain was in the Byzantine Empire. At another, the Catalans fought the Turks in Anatolia.The Catalan leader Roger de Flor was killed by theByzantine emperor Michael Palaiologos. There are many streets in Barcelona named after de Flor.
In 1571 Spain helped destroy the Ottoman navy at theBattle of Lepanto. The great Spanish writer Miguel deCervantes fought in the battle and described it as"the end of Turkish invincibility."Only 17 years later Spain lost its own "invincibility"when its powerful navy was destroyed by the English.
The Spanish today are very passive people. There is nocompulsory military service and the people do not likewar. In Turkey there is compulsory military serviceand the mentality is more agressive.
The Turks had to fight for survival during the lastfew hundred years of Ottoman rule, until Ataturkfounded the Republic of Turkey. People here are verynationalist.
In Spain the people are more regionalist. Cataloniaand the Basque Country have different cultures anddifferent languages. But they had no rights during the40-year dictatorship of Francisco Franco.
When Turkey plays football everyone in Turkey wantsthem to win. In Barcelona and the Basque Country, Ifound, many people did not care when the Spanish teamplayed. It was much more important for the Spanishwhen Barcelona played Real Madrid.
The Turks and Spanish like football and basketball.These have become much more popular than traditionalsports like Turkish wrestling and Spanishbull-fighting.
Turkey and Spain are both on the Mediterranean andthis has had a big influence on the cuisine with lotsof sea food.But the drinking habits are different. Turks likeblack coffee, tea and raki. Spanish prefer coffee witha lot of milk (cafe con leche), red wine and sangria.
Like Italians and other Mediterranean people, Turksand Spanish are very careful about their clothes. Thisis much more important to them than it is to NorthernEuropeans and Americans.
The family is also much more important to the Turksand Spanish.Turks work hard, generally much more than Westerners.
The Spanish like holidays, fiestas (parties) andsiestas (day-time sleeps).On summer afternoons the streets of Spain are almostempty. But at 3am they are full of people and parties.People have dinner at 11pm and go out at 2am!The Spanish, in my experience, are quite lazy students. Turks seem to be much better at speakingEnglish, especially in Istanbul and other cities popular with tourists.
Spain has developed its economy through tourism and isnow quite a rich country. Sixty million tourists gothere every year. Turkey, with its hot summers and Mediterranean beaches, has the potential to do thesame.
In history religion was very important to the Turksand Spanish. But both nations are more relaxed aboutreligion now. Ataturk made Turkey more secular, while the Spanish became more secular after Franco's death.
The languages are very different. Turkish is simpler but more difficult for me to learn. That is because Turkish is an Altaic language from Central Asia. Spanish is Indo-European and has a similar vocabularyto English.In 1066, only five years before the Seljuks destroyedthe Byzantine army, the French invaded Britain.
English was a Germanic language but its vocabularysoon became equally Latin.Many formal words in English are Latin, while most of the informal words are Germanic. For example, 'stomach' is Latin and 'belly' is Germanic. But they mean the same thing.
The Turks and the Spanish are happy, friendly people,and both nations have many beautiful women. There are,of course, many different physical types, with blonde hair and blue eyes quite common in the north and much darker people in the south.
The Turks and the Spanish are also equally crazy in traffic!
End
http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=88914
INTERMEDIATE
The Turks and the Spanish
A thousand years ago Turkey was Christian and Spainwas Muslim.They are two nations with fascinating histories andrich cultures. That's why I have spent most of thepast nine years living in them.
At one time part of Spain was in the Byzantine Empire. At another, the Catalans fought the Turks in Anatolia.The Catalan leader Roger de Flor was killed by theByzantine emperor Michael Palaiologos. There are many streets in Barcelona named after de Flor.
In 1571 Spain helped destroy the Ottoman navy at theBattle of Lepanto. The great Spanish writer Miguel deCervantes fought in the battle and described it as"the end of Turkish invincibility."Only 17 years later Spain lost its own "invincibility"when its powerful navy was destroyed by the English.
The Spanish today are very passive people. There is nocompulsory military service and the people do not likewar. In Turkey there is compulsory military serviceand the mentality is more agressive.
The Turks had to fight for survival during the lastfew hundred years of Ottoman rule, until Ataturkfounded the Republic of Turkey. People here are verynationalist.
In Spain the people are more regionalist. Cataloniaand the Basque Country have different cultures anddifferent languages. But they had no rights during the40-year dictatorship of Francisco Franco.
When Turkey plays football everyone in Turkey wantsthem to win. In Barcelona and the Basque Country, Ifound, many people did not care when the Spanish teamplayed. It was much more important for the Spanishwhen Barcelona played Real Madrid.
The Turks and Spanish like football and basketball.These have become much more popular than traditionalsports like Turkish wrestling and Spanishbull-fighting.
Turkey and Spain are both on the Mediterranean andthis has had a big influence on the cuisine with lotsof sea food.But the drinking habits are different. Turks likeblack coffee, tea and raki. Spanish prefer coffee witha lot of milk (cafe con leche), red wine and sangria.
Like Italians and other Mediterranean people, Turksand Spanish are very careful about their clothes. Thisis much more important to them than it is to NorthernEuropeans and Americans.
The family is also much more important to the Turksand Spanish.Turks work hard, generally much more than Westerners.
The Spanish like holidays, fiestas (parties) andsiestas (day-time sleeps).On summer afternoons the streets of Spain are almostempty. But at 3am they are full of people and parties.People have dinner at 11pm and go out at 2am!The Spanish, in my experience, are quite lazy students. Turks seem to be much better at speakingEnglish, especially in Istanbul and other cities popular with tourists.
Spain has developed its economy through tourism and isnow quite a rich country. Sixty million tourists gothere every year. Turkey, with its hot summers and Mediterranean beaches, has the potential to do thesame.
In history religion was very important to the Turksand Spanish. But both nations are more relaxed aboutreligion now. Ataturk made Turkey more secular, while the Spanish became more secular after Franco's death.
The languages are very different. Turkish is simpler but more difficult for me to learn. That is because Turkish is an Altaic language from Central Asia. Spanish is Indo-European and has a similar vocabularyto English.In 1066, only five years before the Seljuks destroyedthe Byzantine army, the French invaded Britain.
English was a Germanic language but its vocabularysoon became equally Latin.Many formal words in English are Latin, while most of the informal words are Germanic. For example, 'stomach' is Latin and 'belly' is Germanic. But they mean the same thing.
The Turks and the Spanish are happy, friendly people,and both nations have many beautiful women. There are,of course, many different physical types, with blonde hair and blue eyes quite common in the north and much darker people in the south.
The Turks and the Spanish are also equally crazy in traffic!
End
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Istanbul - Damascus overland
Adapted from my travel blog and published in the Turkish Daily News at Intermediate level: http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=85214
Earlier this year I traveled to Damascus (Dimashq ash-Sham) over land. I took the train from Istanbul to Adana, alone in a two-bed cabin, as often happens on Turkish trains. So half the journey I slept, and the other half I watched Anatolia go by.
Adana was an attractive city with a modern center. It seemed as “European” as Istanbul or İzmir, despite being on the Middle East's doorstep. There were many nice cafes and I ate the famous Adana kebabs. I spent the evening watching Turkish dancing and singing in a bar.
Next morning I was up early to get the bus to Antakya, via the ancient city of İskenderun on the Mediterranean Sea.
The "fun" started there. I was pushed into a service bus and taken to a big bus organized to get tourists across the border. But when we got to the border the Turkish authorities told us to go back because the bus was not full. The driver took us halfway back to Antakya, then turned around and went back to the border. Again we were told to go back, so we all got off and were put into two dolmuşes. Our dolmuş, however, did not have enough passengers either, so we were told to go back for a third time.
Finally we found two “hitch-hikers” and, three hours after reaching the border, managed to get across. During this time I made friends with a few of the other passengers. They included an English photographer who lived in Damascus with his Syrian wife.
From Aleppo we got the bus to Damascus. It is said to be the oldest city in the world where people have always lived, going back more than 10,000 years. Following 400 years of Ottoman rule, Syria was taken by the French after World War I, becoming independent again in 1946. The center of the city has a French influence with its architecture and restaurants. I visited the Umayyad Mosque and the old city.
On my second day, John Wreford, the photographer I had met at the border came to my hotel and invited me to Sayyida Zainab, the Shiite area of the city. There were many people from Iraq there, and we met one young man who had lost a hand in the war. They were friendly to us even though we were Westerners. Tourists are not judged by the actions of their politicians, thankfully!
Apart from the magnificent Sayyida Zeinab Mosque, the area looked very poor. There were dead animals hanging in front of the shops and one man was killing fish in front of the customers. We ate “kibbe” and drank spicy Arab coffee in one of these shops. We also saw an informal game of cricket. Probably the players were from Pakistan.
The next day I took the midnight (12:00 a.m.) train from Damascus to Aleppo, then went back across the border by taxi. It cost only YTL 50 from Aleppo to Antakya – where I had a giant breakfast with coffees for a total of YTL 4.
Earlier this year I traveled to Damascus (Dimashq ash-Sham) over land. I took the train from Istanbul to Adana, alone in a two-bed cabin, as often happens on Turkish trains. So half the journey I slept, and the other half I watched Anatolia go by.
Adana was an attractive city with a modern center. It seemed as “European” as Istanbul or İzmir, despite being on the Middle East's doorstep. There were many nice cafes and I ate the famous Adana kebabs. I spent the evening watching Turkish dancing and singing in a bar.
Next morning I was up early to get the bus to Antakya, via the ancient city of İskenderun on the Mediterranean Sea.
The "fun" started there. I was pushed into a service bus and taken to a big bus organized to get tourists across the border. But when we got to the border the Turkish authorities told us to go back because the bus was not full. The driver took us halfway back to Antakya, then turned around and went back to the border. Again we were told to go back, so we all got off and were put into two dolmuşes. Our dolmuş, however, did not have enough passengers either, so we were told to go back for a third time.
Finally we found two “hitch-hikers” and, three hours after reaching the border, managed to get across. During this time I made friends with a few of the other passengers. They included an English photographer who lived in Damascus with his Syrian wife.
From Aleppo we got the bus to Damascus. It is said to be the oldest city in the world where people have always lived, going back more than 10,000 years. Following 400 years of Ottoman rule, Syria was taken by the French after World War I, becoming independent again in 1946. The center of the city has a French influence with its architecture and restaurants. I visited the Umayyad Mosque and the old city.
On my second day, John Wreford, the photographer I had met at the border came to my hotel and invited me to Sayyida Zainab, the Shiite area of the city. There were many people from Iraq there, and we met one young man who had lost a hand in the war. They were friendly to us even though we were Westerners. Tourists are not judged by the actions of their politicians, thankfully!
Apart from the magnificent Sayyida Zeinab Mosque, the area looked very poor. There were dead animals hanging in front of the shops and one man was killing fish in front of the customers. We ate “kibbe” and drank spicy Arab coffee in one of these shops. We also saw an informal game of cricket. Probably the players were from Pakistan.
The next day I took the midnight (12:00 a.m.) train from Damascus to Aleppo, then went back across the border by taxi. It cost only YTL 50 from Aleppo to Antakya – where I had a giant breakfast with coffees for a total of YTL 4.
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Princes' Islands - escape the big city
Published in the Turkish Daily News http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=81732
One of the easiest and cheapest ways to escape the crowded streets and traffic jams of Istanbul is a trip to the Princes' Islands. It costs only YTL 2 each way. The ferries used to leave from Sirkeci near Eminönü, but now they leave from Kabataş near Dolmabahçe Palace.
They stop at Kadıkoy on the Asian side of Istanbul, as well as all four islands. From Kabataş to Büyükada, the last and biggest of the islands, takes about two hours. At most times of the year I enjoy the ferry ride as much as my afternoon on the islands. The view is fantastic and I like to have lunch in the cafeteria on the way. Often there are friendly people to talk to.
Between June and September, however, I prefer the catamaran (deniz otobüsü), called the “fast ferry.” This also leaves from Kabataş but does not stop at Kadıkoy. It costs YTL 5.5 each way. Although the price is higher, I use this service in the summer because it is less crowded, air-conditioned, and much quicker. From Kabataş to Büyükada takes about 45 minutes.
The “slow” ferries are very crowded in the summer. Many people cannot get seats and have to stand or sit on the floor.
Some people can be very selfish about seats. I have seen them reserving seats for people who are never there, or from Kabataş for people who are going to get on in Kadıköy 15 minutes later. This kind of behavior makes everybody feel angry and there are often arguments. The fast ferry does not take more people on board than the number of seats it has.
I also prefer the catamaran in the summer because I like to swim, and the time saved gives me an extra two hours in the water.
There are no cars on the islands, only phaetons and bicycles. These can be hired and the bicycles are cheap. Normally I go to Heybeliada, home of the Turkish Naval Academy. I enjoy walking around the island and swimming at the back where there are small beaches and not many people.
Sometimes I go to Burgazada, a high island, which has fantastic views of the Marmara Sea and Anatolia. Both islands have a lot of nice cafes at the front, facing the Asian side of Istanbul. They are a nice place to finish the visit, while waiting for the ferry back to the big city.
One of the easiest and cheapest ways to escape the crowded streets and traffic jams of Istanbul is a trip to the Princes' Islands. It costs only YTL 2 each way. The ferries used to leave from Sirkeci near Eminönü, but now they leave from Kabataş near Dolmabahçe Palace.
They stop at Kadıkoy on the Asian side of Istanbul, as well as all four islands. From Kabataş to Büyükada, the last and biggest of the islands, takes about two hours. At most times of the year I enjoy the ferry ride as much as my afternoon on the islands. The view is fantastic and I like to have lunch in the cafeteria on the way. Often there are friendly people to talk to.
Between June and September, however, I prefer the catamaran (deniz otobüsü), called the “fast ferry.” This also leaves from Kabataş but does not stop at Kadıkoy. It costs YTL 5.5 each way. Although the price is higher, I use this service in the summer because it is less crowded, air-conditioned, and much quicker. From Kabataş to Büyükada takes about 45 minutes.
The “slow” ferries are very crowded in the summer. Many people cannot get seats and have to stand or sit on the floor.
Some people can be very selfish about seats. I have seen them reserving seats for people who are never there, or from Kabataş for people who are going to get on in Kadıköy 15 minutes later. This kind of behavior makes everybody feel angry and there are often arguments. The fast ferry does not take more people on board than the number of seats it has.
I also prefer the catamaran in the summer because I like to swim, and the time saved gives me an extra two hours in the water.
There are no cars on the islands, only phaetons and bicycles. These can be hired and the bicycles are cheap. Normally I go to Heybeliada, home of the Turkish Naval Academy. I enjoy walking around the island and swimming at the back where there are small beaches and not many people.
Sometimes I go to Burgazada, a high island, which has fantastic views of the Marmara Sea and Anatolia. Both islands have a lot of nice cafes at the front, facing the Asian side of Istanbul. They are a nice place to finish the visit, while waiting for the ferry back to the big city.
Friday, July 27, 2007
New Zealand - Beautiful but Boring
Written for the Turkish Daily News learners' page: http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=79143
People are often surprised when I tell them I have no plan to return to New Zealand. I have European Union citizenship from my English mother, and Spain has been my home base for the last eight years.
New Zealand is a beautiful country with mountains, forests and beaches, much like Turkey. It is very good for outdoor sports. It has a similar climate to theEuropean part of Turkey, and it is about the same distance from the equator.
During my travels I have learned to appreciate two things about New Zealand. It is beautiful and there is a lot of space. New Zealand is bigger than the UnitedKingdom and has only four million people. The South Island, where “Lord of the Rings” was filmed, is bigger than England but has less than one millionpeople. New Zealanders live in houses with big front and back gardens. There are almost no apartments.
About ninety percent of New Zealanders are of British or Irish ancestry. The native Maori are about fourteen percent of the population, but most have some British or Irish ancestry as well. The main immigrant groups are from the Pacific Islands.
New Zealand, therefore, is very much an English society. Elizabeth II of England is the Queen of New Zealand. Things have changed in recent times. Maoriculture has become more important and the language is now taught in schools.
But in many ways New Zealand is more English than England and, for me, a little boring. Traditionally it is a nation of sheep farmers, rugby players and beerdrinkers. Today more people live in the cities than work on the farms, however. One third of New Zealanders, 1.3 million, live in the biggest city, Auckland.
Rugby is more popular than football. New Zealand's “All Blacks” won the first Rugby World Cup in 1987 and are the favorite to win this year's World Cup in France.
They were also favorites in 1999, but France beat them in the semifinals. New Zealanders were shocked. The coach was replaced, the captain was replaced, and even the prime minister of New Zealand was replaced in the next elections!
Before their games the “All Blacks” do the Haka, a traditional Maori dance which is very popular with the fans.
Families in New Zealand are generally not as close as they are in Turkey. This is different for the Maori people however. The family is very important for them.
The Maori are a Polynesian people who came to New Zealand about 1,200 years ago. Most experts today think the Polynesians migrated out of South East Asia into the Pacific Islands thousands of years ago. They built very big boats – catamarans – on the islands of Tahiti and sailed thousands of kilometers to find places like Hawaii, Easter Island and New Zealand.
In New Zealand they separated into tribes and fought many wars with each other. The British Empire fought long, difficult wars with the Maori in the 19th century.
In the 1850s New Zealand began to govern itself, but it was still a British colony. It was the first place in the world to give women the vote, in 1893. In theFirst World War, many New Zealanders fought for the Anzacs (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) in Turkey. Anzac Day is an important holiday in Australia and New Zealand.
New Zealand was a rich country after World War II and became independent in 1947. It was often called one of the best places in the world to bring up children. Life became more difficult in the 1980s, but there is a good social welfare system and there are no very poor people.
In 1999 New Zealand elected a woman prime minister for the first time. Helen Clark has been very successful, winning three elections. Traditionally New Zealand has supported Britain and America in war, but Clark's Labor Party opposed the second invasion of Iraq. She has been called one of the 20 most powerful women in the world.
Other famous New Zealanders were early 20th century writer Katherine Mansfield, from the capital city Wellington, Edmund Hillary who became the first man to climb Mt Everest in 1953, and actor Russell Crowe whose cousins were cricket stars for New Zealand.
New Zealand is also the home of the kiwi fruit. In fact, the kiwi is the native bird of New Zealand, and the word can be used as an adjective to describethings from that country, including its people – Kiwis.
People are often surprised when I tell them I have no plan to return to New Zealand. I have European Union citizenship from my English mother, and Spain has been my home base for the last eight years.
New Zealand is a beautiful country with mountains, forests and beaches, much like Turkey. It is very good for outdoor sports. It has a similar climate to theEuropean part of Turkey, and it is about the same distance from the equator.
During my travels I have learned to appreciate two things about New Zealand. It is beautiful and there is a lot of space. New Zealand is bigger than the UnitedKingdom and has only four million people. The South Island, where “Lord of the Rings” was filmed, is bigger than England but has less than one millionpeople. New Zealanders live in houses with big front and back gardens. There are almost no apartments.
About ninety percent of New Zealanders are of British or Irish ancestry. The native Maori are about fourteen percent of the population, but most have some British or Irish ancestry as well. The main immigrant groups are from the Pacific Islands.
New Zealand, therefore, is very much an English society. Elizabeth II of England is the Queen of New Zealand. Things have changed in recent times. Maoriculture has become more important and the language is now taught in schools.
But in many ways New Zealand is more English than England and, for me, a little boring. Traditionally it is a nation of sheep farmers, rugby players and beerdrinkers. Today more people live in the cities than work on the farms, however. One third of New Zealanders, 1.3 million, live in the biggest city, Auckland.
Rugby is more popular than football. New Zealand's “All Blacks” won the first Rugby World Cup in 1987 and are the favorite to win this year's World Cup in France.
They were also favorites in 1999, but France beat them in the semifinals. New Zealanders were shocked. The coach was replaced, the captain was replaced, and even the prime minister of New Zealand was replaced in the next elections!
Before their games the “All Blacks” do the Haka, a traditional Maori dance which is very popular with the fans.
Families in New Zealand are generally not as close as they are in Turkey. This is different for the Maori people however. The family is very important for them.
The Maori are a Polynesian people who came to New Zealand about 1,200 years ago. Most experts today think the Polynesians migrated out of South East Asia into the Pacific Islands thousands of years ago. They built very big boats – catamarans – on the islands of Tahiti and sailed thousands of kilometers to find places like Hawaii, Easter Island and New Zealand.
In New Zealand they separated into tribes and fought many wars with each other. The British Empire fought long, difficult wars with the Maori in the 19th century.
In the 1850s New Zealand began to govern itself, but it was still a British colony. It was the first place in the world to give women the vote, in 1893. In theFirst World War, many New Zealanders fought for the Anzacs (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) in Turkey. Anzac Day is an important holiday in Australia and New Zealand.
New Zealand was a rich country after World War II and became independent in 1947. It was often called one of the best places in the world to bring up children. Life became more difficult in the 1980s, but there is a good social welfare system and there are no very poor people.
In 1999 New Zealand elected a woman prime minister for the first time. Helen Clark has been very successful, winning three elections. Traditionally New Zealand has supported Britain and America in war, but Clark's Labor Party opposed the second invasion of Iraq. She has been called one of the 20 most powerful women in the world.
Other famous New Zealanders were early 20th century writer Katherine Mansfield, from the capital city Wellington, Edmund Hillary who became the first man to climb Mt Everest in 1953, and actor Russell Crowe whose cousins were cricket stars for New Zealand.
New Zealand is also the home of the kiwi fruit. In fact, the kiwi is the native bird of New Zealand, and the word can be used as an adjective to describethings from that country, including its people – Kiwis.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Turks are Turks
Turks are Turks (published in the Turkish Daily News http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=76629 )
'Biz bize benzeriz,' Ataturk used to say. 'We are like ourselves.'
It is a mistake, I believe, to say Turkey is European, or Asian, or Middle Eastern.
Its geography includes all of these. But its culture can only be called Turkish.
The political system is like West Europe, the military and police seem more East European, and the main religion is from the Middle East.
The language is from Central Asia but is now written with the Roman alphabet. The food is a combination of Central Asia and the Mediterranean.
The people and their culture are a mix of all the above places. Anatolia seems close to Asia. Istanbul and the Agaen coast seem closer to the Balkan countries and Greece.
I have read that the Ottomans always wanted more people in their empire. Race was not important, and as early as the time of Fatih Mehmet the Turks were a minority in their own empire.
The result is a culture that can only be called Turkish.
Perhaps the most unusual part of this is the language. It is the main connection with the origins of the Turks who first came here.
It is a close relative of other languages in Central Asia, and a more distant relative of East Asian languages such as Mongolian, Korean and Japanese.
Some experts say there is a connection between the Turks and the native Americans. DNA testing has supported this idea.
The popular theory is that native Americans came from East Asia toward the end of the last Ice Age, when much lower sea levels created a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska.
Hugh Pope, a journalist in Istanbul, writes in his book 'Sons of the Conquerers' that a Turkish friend of his in America has found 500 Turkic words in Navaho Indian and 500 more in Mexican Maya.
The Turks of Central Asia could even be more closely related to some native American peoples than they are to the majority of people in Turkey.
It is very interesting that the Turkish language survived the journey across Asia when many other things changed.
It also survived the rise and fall of an empire that in the time of Kanuni Suleyman was the biggest in the world, ruling much of the Middle East, North Africa and South East Europe.
Turkey is a bridge in many ways. But it is also the home of a unique, fascinating and important culture that has given a lot to the world around it, and which can only be described as Turkish.
end
'Biz bize benzeriz,' Ataturk used to say. 'We are like ourselves.'
It is a mistake, I believe, to say Turkey is European, or Asian, or Middle Eastern.
Its geography includes all of these. But its culture can only be called Turkish.
The political system is like West Europe, the military and police seem more East European, and the main religion is from the Middle East.
The language is from Central Asia but is now written with the Roman alphabet. The food is a combination of Central Asia and the Mediterranean.
The people and their culture are a mix of all the above places. Anatolia seems close to Asia. Istanbul and the Agaen coast seem closer to the Balkan countries and Greece.
I have read that the Ottomans always wanted more people in their empire. Race was not important, and as early as the time of Fatih Mehmet the Turks were a minority in their own empire.
The result is a culture that can only be called Turkish.
Perhaps the most unusual part of this is the language. It is the main connection with the origins of the Turks who first came here.
It is a close relative of other languages in Central Asia, and a more distant relative of East Asian languages such as Mongolian, Korean and Japanese.
Some experts say there is a connection between the Turks and the native Americans. DNA testing has supported this idea.
The popular theory is that native Americans came from East Asia toward the end of the last Ice Age, when much lower sea levels created a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska.
Hugh Pope, a journalist in Istanbul, writes in his book 'Sons of the Conquerers' that a Turkish friend of his in America has found 500 Turkic words in Navaho Indian and 500 more in Mexican Maya.
The Turks of Central Asia could even be more closely related to some native American peoples than they are to the majority of people in Turkey.
It is very interesting that the Turkish language survived the journey across Asia when many other things changed.
It also survived the rise and fall of an empire that in the time of Kanuni Suleyman was the biggest in the world, ruling much of the Middle East, North Africa and South East Europe.
Turkey is a bridge in many ways. But it is also the home of a unique, fascinating and important culture that has given a lot to the world around it, and which can only be described as Turkish.
end
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Polynesians in Africa? Vikings in America?
Polynesians in Africa? Vikings in America? Caucasians in Japan?
These are some of the historical oddities I have been researching on the internet:
"Polynesians" in Africa:
The prevalented theory is the first inhabitants of Madagascar were a Malayo-Polynesian speaking people of Austronesian, or mixed Austronesian-Negroid, ethnicity.
They are thought to have reached the giant African island in Biblical times, or shortly after, about when their ethnic kinsmen were travelling from Samoa and Tonga toward Tahiti.
Austroloid peoples originated in South East Asia and had been expanding into Australia and the Pacific since the Stone Age. They progressed as far as Fiji in the east. The Melanesian (black lands) are the islands inhabited by their descendants.
It seems there was a fresh wave of mixed Mongoloid-Austroloid migrations, beginning just a few thousand years ago, most probably as Mongoloid began to press down from North East Asia.
The migrations throughout the Pacific, as far as Hawaii, Tahiti, Easter Island and New Zealand are well-documented. It seems they may also have reached South America, without actually settling there, as South American crops featured in Pan-Polynesian trade routes of pre-European times.
Polynesia simply means 'many lands' and is the name given to the Austroloid-Mongoloid race which inhabited these islands.
Austroloid-Mongoloid also migrated west, along the southern coast of Asia and the east coast of Africa. Whether or not they mixed with African natives before their arrival in Madagascar remains a mystery. It is known that the Arabs introduced native Africans to the island after they began trading there in the seventh century AD.
Europeans did not discover Madagascar until eight years after Colombus had reached the Americas.
Diogo Dias of Portugal became the first Euorpean to sight the island in 1500. The French began trading there in the 17th century, then invaded in 1883, establishing a protectorate two years later.
The majority of the population remains of mixed Austronesian-Negroid ethnicity. The national language, Malagasy, is a member of the Malayo-Polynesian family. A caste system is active among the 18 ancient tribes of the island. The Merina are the largest among them.
In the early 19th century Andrianampoinimerinandriantsimitoviaminandriampanjaka united the Merina kingdom, a collection of Malayo-Austronesian speaking tribes in the highlands (they number about 3 million today). He went on to conquer most of the island. His successor Radama I signed a treaty with the British, outlawed slavery and admitted Christian missionaries.
He was followed by his widow, Queen Ranavalona I, who secured her place via the practice of fratricide, and ruled for 33 years. She prohibited Christianity, banished the missionaries, and engaged in a campaign of religious persecution leading to as many as 150,000 Christian deaths.
Ranavalona's heir, Radama II (son of Radama I), in turn, reversed many of her policies, signing treaties with the English and French and welcoming back the missionaries. He was assassinated in 1863, after just two years on the throne.
Queens Ranavalona II and III followed, before French victory brought an end to the Merina dynasty in 1897.
Madagascar did not regain full independence until 1960, 13 years after an unsuccessful uprising which claimed as many as 90,000 lives, all but 180 of them Malagasy. Thousands more had been sentenced to death or imprisonment.
"Vikings" were the first Europeans in America:
Although this became an established fact following the discovery of Norse ruins in Newfoundland in 1960, it is still not widely known that Europeans had reached the Americas half a millenia before Columbus, who arrived there half a millenia ago.
Leif Ericson, son of Eric the Red (a Norwegian outlaw banished to Iceland, from whence he discovered Greenland in the early 980s), sailed from Greenland around 1000AD in search of a land sighted by countryman Bjarni Herjolfsson when blown off course during a storm in 986.
Ericson first reached Baffin Island (Canada), which he named Helluland (land of the flat stones), then Markland (forest land), generally considered to have been Labrador.
The first "permanent" settlement was at the northern tip of New Foundland, which Ericson named Vinland (wine land). The ruins were uncovered by Helge Ingstad and Anne Stine in the 1950s, finally confirmed in 1960.
The colonization was not led by Ericson, however, but by his brother-in-law Thorfinn Karlsefni some years later. According to the Icelandic sagas, Karlsefni took 160 people with him, all but 15 of them men.
They survived there only a few years. Their demise remains a mystery. It may have come about as a result of conflict with the natives, though the sagas recount efforts on the part of the settlers to appease the local chiefs.
A Viking coin has been discovered in Maine, and a Scandanavian stone carving in Minnesota, but there is no concrete evidence the Norsemen ventured as far south as the modern-day United States. More likely these artefacts arrived there through trade, whether in pre-Columbıan times or later.
"Caucasians" in Japan?
Although I have, in the past, read accounts which describe the Ainu aboriginals of Japan as "Caucasoid," it now seems that theory has fallen by the wayside.
Genetic testing has shown the Ainu to be a Mongoloid people whose closest relatives are in Tibet and the Bengal Bay islands of Andaman. Neither were they the original inhabitants of Japan. Tribes of various ethnicity had been making their way into the islands since the Stone Age.
It seems the Ainu were one of a number of tribes which existed on the continent before the rise of the Chinese Han dynasty.
Attempts have been made to include the Ainu language in the macro-Altaic, which includes Japanese, Korean, Mongolian and Turkic. However, it is commonly accepted to be a "language isolate."
Slightly more far-fetched hypotheses endeavoured to link Ainu with Austronesian, and even the hypothetical macro-Euroasiatic language. The latter perhaps gave rise to the "Caucasoid" theory.
Taller and more athletic than the Japanese, people of predominantly Ainu stock number around 50,000 today. There are a further 100,000 Japanese with minor Ainu ancestry.
end
These are some of the historical oddities I have been researching on the internet:
"Polynesians" in Africa:
The prevalented theory is the first inhabitants of Madagascar were a Malayo-Polynesian speaking people of Austronesian, or mixed Austronesian-Negroid, ethnicity.
They are thought to have reached the giant African island in Biblical times, or shortly after, about when their ethnic kinsmen were travelling from Samoa and Tonga toward Tahiti.
Austroloid peoples originated in South East Asia and had been expanding into Australia and the Pacific since the Stone Age. They progressed as far as Fiji in the east. The Melanesian (black lands) are the islands inhabited by their descendants.
It seems there was a fresh wave of mixed Mongoloid-Austroloid migrations, beginning just a few thousand years ago, most probably as Mongoloid began to press down from North East Asia.
The migrations throughout the Pacific, as far as Hawaii, Tahiti, Easter Island and New Zealand are well-documented. It seems they may also have reached South America, without actually settling there, as South American crops featured in Pan-Polynesian trade routes of pre-European times.
Polynesia simply means 'many lands' and is the name given to the Austroloid-Mongoloid race which inhabited these islands.
Austroloid-Mongoloid also migrated west, along the southern coast of Asia and the east coast of Africa. Whether or not they mixed with African natives before their arrival in Madagascar remains a mystery. It is known that the Arabs introduced native Africans to the island after they began trading there in the seventh century AD.
Europeans did not discover Madagascar until eight years after Colombus had reached the Americas.
Diogo Dias of Portugal became the first Euorpean to sight the island in 1500. The French began trading there in the 17th century, then invaded in 1883, establishing a protectorate two years later.
The majority of the population remains of mixed Austronesian-Negroid ethnicity. The national language, Malagasy, is a member of the Malayo-Polynesian family. A caste system is active among the 18 ancient tribes of the island. The Merina are the largest among them.
In the early 19th century Andrianampoinimerinandriantsimitoviaminandriampanjaka united the Merina kingdom, a collection of Malayo-Austronesian speaking tribes in the highlands (they number about 3 million today). He went on to conquer most of the island. His successor Radama I signed a treaty with the British, outlawed slavery and admitted Christian missionaries.
He was followed by his widow, Queen Ranavalona I, who secured her place via the practice of fratricide, and ruled for 33 years. She prohibited Christianity, banished the missionaries, and engaged in a campaign of religious persecution leading to as many as 150,000 Christian deaths.
Ranavalona's heir, Radama II (son of Radama I), in turn, reversed many of her policies, signing treaties with the English and French and welcoming back the missionaries. He was assassinated in 1863, after just two years on the throne.
Queens Ranavalona II and III followed, before French victory brought an end to the Merina dynasty in 1897.
Madagascar did not regain full independence until 1960, 13 years after an unsuccessful uprising which claimed as many as 90,000 lives, all but 180 of them Malagasy. Thousands more had been sentenced to death or imprisonment.
"Vikings" were the first Europeans in America:
Although this became an established fact following the discovery of Norse ruins in Newfoundland in 1960, it is still not widely known that Europeans had reached the Americas half a millenia before Columbus, who arrived there half a millenia ago.
Leif Ericson, son of Eric the Red (a Norwegian outlaw banished to Iceland, from whence he discovered Greenland in the early 980s), sailed from Greenland around 1000AD in search of a land sighted by countryman Bjarni Herjolfsson when blown off course during a storm in 986.
Ericson first reached Baffin Island (Canada), which he named Helluland (land of the flat stones), then Markland (forest land), generally considered to have been Labrador.
The first "permanent" settlement was at the northern tip of New Foundland, which Ericson named Vinland (wine land). The ruins were uncovered by Helge Ingstad and Anne Stine in the 1950s, finally confirmed in 1960.
The colonization was not led by Ericson, however, but by his brother-in-law Thorfinn Karlsefni some years later. According to the Icelandic sagas, Karlsefni took 160 people with him, all but 15 of them men.
They survived there only a few years. Their demise remains a mystery. It may have come about as a result of conflict with the natives, though the sagas recount efforts on the part of the settlers to appease the local chiefs.
A Viking coin has been discovered in Maine, and a Scandanavian stone carving in Minnesota, but there is no concrete evidence the Norsemen ventured as far south as the modern-day United States. More likely these artefacts arrived there through trade, whether in pre-Columbıan times or later.
"Caucasians" in Japan?
Although I have, in the past, read accounts which describe the Ainu aboriginals of Japan as "Caucasoid," it now seems that theory has fallen by the wayside.
Genetic testing has shown the Ainu to be a Mongoloid people whose closest relatives are in Tibet and the Bengal Bay islands of Andaman. Neither were they the original inhabitants of Japan. Tribes of various ethnicity had been making their way into the islands since the Stone Age.
It seems the Ainu were one of a number of tribes which existed on the continent before the rise of the Chinese Han dynasty.
Attempts have been made to include the Ainu language in the macro-Altaic, which includes Japanese, Korean, Mongolian and Turkic. However, it is commonly accepted to be a "language isolate."
Slightly more far-fetched hypotheses endeavoured to link Ainu with Austronesian, and even the hypothetical macro-Euroasiatic language. The latter perhaps gave rise to the "Caucasoid" theory.
Taller and more athletic than the Japanese, people of predominantly Ainu stock number around 50,000 today. There are a further 100,000 Japanese with minor Ainu ancestry.
end
Monday, May 14, 2007
Trials & Tribulations of a native English-speaker
(published in the Turkish Daily News http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=74440 )
Native English speakers, they like to say, are not good at learning other languages.
In my case that certainly holds true.
I am handicapped, as a New Zealander, having grown up in a society where no other language was used.
Eight years ago I set off for Europe in search of adventure. One of the challenges I set for myself was to learn another language. I settled in Spain and spent the next five years learning Spanish.
The first year I was based in Jaen, central Andalusia. This provided an invaluable crash course, for English-speakers were few and far between.
The next year, spent in the Basque capital Vitoria, was similarly beneficial.
Then I moved to Barcelona, a veritable paradise on the Mediterranean. But like much of that sun-drenched coast, it is infested with English-speaking foreigners, not least the English themselves.
Among the locals, and even the immigrants from non-English-speaking countries, I stood more chance of having a discussion in Catalan than I did in Spanish.
When I spoke to people in Spanish they would invariably reply in English. If I insisted on Spanish they would raise the bar to a level above my comprehension, then smugly come to my aid in English.
My companion during these times, a blond Catalan, was regularly addressed in English by her own countrymen - in the heart of Barcelona, much to her annoyance
I have encountered similar difficulties since coming to Turkey. Perhaps due to the Turkish language's lack of international usage, the prevalent attitude seems to be that a foreigner attempting to speak it is clearly showing off. The raising-the-bar tactic is thus executed with particular relish.
Yet the Turks, like the Spanish, crave nothing more than an opportunity to practise their English with a native-speaker; a joy which surpasses even that of deriding the native English-speaker's lack of linguistic aptitude.
All this is, of course, a result of English-speaking America's domination of the world. A thousand years ago I might have encountered similar difficulties striking up a conversation in anything but Latin. Five centuries ago it might have been Spanish. Two hundred and fifty years ago, French.
While American domination of the world is encouraging its inhabitants to embrace English as the lingua franca of our times, it is simultaneously encouraging much animosity toward America.
I would be the first to endorse widespread grievances over the manner in which American domination of the world is being sustained. But a tallish, broad-shouldered redhead - the embodiment of the stereotypical 'Frankish' oppressor, I suppose - I tend to find myself a prime target for those with the chip-on-the-shoulder mentality.
But, if anything, resentment of my efforts to speak other languages seems even more proncounced among English-speakers themselves. For it is unnecessary in a world where everyone is learning English.
Clearly I have spent the past seven years struggling to learn other languages just to show off.
Had I not made that effort, however, I would have been perceived as the arrogant foreigner who expected everyone to speakEnglish; the embodiment of the stereotypical English-speaker incapable of learning another language.
end
Native English speakers, they like to say, are not good at learning other languages.
In my case that certainly holds true.
I am handicapped, as a New Zealander, having grown up in a society where no other language was used.
Eight years ago I set off for Europe in search of adventure. One of the challenges I set for myself was to learn another language. I settled in Spain and spent the next five years learning Spanish.
The first year I was based in Jaen, central Andalusia. This provided an invaluable crash course, for English-speakers were few and far between.
The next year, spent in the Basque capital Vitoria, was similarly beneficial.
Then I moved to Barcelona, a veritable paradise on the Mediterranean. But like much of that sun-drenched coast, it is infested with English-speaking foreigners, not least the English themselves.
Among the locals, and even the immigrants from non-English-speaking countries, I stood more chance of having a discussion in Catalan than I did in Spanish.
When I spoke to people in Spanish they would invariably reply in English. If I insisted on Spanish they would raise the bar to a level above my comprehension, then smugly come to my aid in English.
My companion during these times, a blond Catalan, was regularly addressed in English by her own countrymen - in the heart of Barcelona, much to her annoyance
I have encountered similar difficulties since coming to Turkey. Perhaps due to the Turkish language's lack of international usage, the prevalent attitude seems to be that a foreigner attempting to speak it is clearly showing off. The raising-the-bar tactic is thus executed with particular relish.
Yet the Turks, like the Spanish, crave nothing more than an opportunity to practise their English with a native-speaker; a joy which surpasses even that of deriding the native English-speaker's lack of linguistic aptitude.
All this is, of course, a result of English-speaking America's domination of the world. A thousand years ago I might have encountered similar difficulties striking up a conversation in anything but Latin. Five centuries ago it might have been Spanish. Two hundred and fifty years ago, French.
While American domination of the world is encouraging its inhabitants to embrace English as the lingua franca of our times, it is simultaneously encouraging much animosity toward America.
I would be the first to endorse widespread grievances over the manner in which American domination of the world is being sustained. But a tallish, broad-shouldered redhead - the embodiment of the stereotypical 'Frankish' oppressor, I suppose - I tend to find myself a prime target for those with the chip-on-the-shoulder mentality.
But, if anything, resentment of my efforts to speak other languages seems even more proncounced among English-speakers themselves. For it is unnecessary in a world where everyone is learning English.
Clearly I have spent the past seven years struggling to learn other languages just to show off.
Had I not made that effort, however, I would have been perceived as the arrogant foreigner who expected everyone to speakEnglish; the embodiment of the stereotypical English-speaker incapable of learning another language.
end
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Founding US Football in NZ
Twenty years ago I set up the first American football team in my home city Wellington, New Zealand.
I was 23-years-old then and knew nothing about the game. But I wanted to play it.
I advertised for players in the local paper and waited until I got someone capable of coaching before I brought everyone together.
We got between a dozen and two dozen players along to our Sunday afternoon practise sessions. This was in the summer, as most of us were winter-time rugby players. The coach seldom made it along, however.
National league basketball coach Jeff Green challenged us to a game against his crowd in the suburb of Wainuiomata. They included some members of his basketball team, among them two or three American imports. We lost 8-2 in a game played without equipment.
They visited us at our Rongotai College base a month later and again we lost.
The following season we moved to Porirua Hospital, where we were offered use of a rugby pitch with, oddly, Y-shaped goal posts such as those used in the American game. We played Jeff's team three times that summer, losing away then winning twice at home.
At the end of the season we set up a committee, became an incorporated society, and named our team the Harbour City Hurricanes.
We were still just a bunch of guys in T-shirts and track pants, without a real coach.
It was during our third season that we began to obtain some equipment. This was largely due to a loan from player and committee member Ken Turner. We also acquired a couple of non-playing expat North American coaches. Jeff's team were no more, so we turned our eyes to Auckland, the nation's biggest city, where a league was well-established with about 10 teams.
We made the 400 mile (650km) journey north in January 1990 for our first 'real' game of American football. We hired a mini-bus for the purpose, which broke down just short of our destination, and were billeted by the local team.
The Manukau Stallions had finished last in the Auckland league. They beat us 26-0.
We had precisely 11 helmets, so the players had to exchange them as they came on and off the field. About half the players had shoulder pads. I personally played linebacker and was totally confounded by the blockers, a concept I had not encountered before.
The Stallions visited us a month later and won 8-0 with a touchdown and a safety. This game was attended by Horst Maczuga, education officer at Porirua Police College, who had coached high school football in his native Ohio. He joined our committee and was appointed head-coach for the following season.
During the off-season I busied myself setting up Wellington's second team, the Hutt Valley Chargers, which included a few veterans of Jeff's old crowd. This resulted in some heated arguments between Horst and myself. I had already lost the confidence of some members of the committee due to the club's financial problems. These had resulted from an embezzlement of club funds by the original treasurer; something I had personally failed to detect. Needless to say, Ken's loan had yet to be repaid.
Horst's hand was greatly strengthened when, acting independently of the committee, he managed to secure funding sufficient to clear all debts and fit the entire squad out with equipment and new uniforms. It was indeed a giant leap forward for American football in Wellington.
I left the Hurricanes three years after setting them up and devoted myself to the Chargers. This time things fell into place a lot quicker. We got a big squad together in the spring of 1990, including non-playing coaches. Following Horst's lead, I managed to arrange pub charity funding to kit 22 players out. We played the Hurricanes at the end of the season, for a Capital Bowl trophy which I personally presented for competition, and were defeated 20-16. We also hosted Auckland's Bulldogs, losing 8-6. The Hurricanes, meanwhile, had hosted a team from the city of Hamilton (who played in the Auckland league), losing narrowly, then visited Auckland to take on the third-placed Rangers - who trounced them 97-0!
At the end of the season I set up a Chargers committee. Murray Sullivan, father of our quarterback, was elected president. I wished only to serve in the capacity of publicity officer, as I already had my sights set on establishing a third team. The Chargers did not elect me, however, uncomfortable with my intentions.
The new team would be established in urban Wellington and be known as the Capital City Giants. The Hurricanes had started there but moved east to Porirua. I obtained pub charity funding for the equipment and found a home base at the Teachers Training College in the suburb of Karori.
I then approached the Hurricanes and Chargers about setting up a league and a regional organisation. Surprisingly this met with resistance. The Chargers were for a league but against a regional organisation. The Hurricanes opposed both ideas, but eventually came around to the idea of a league.
All games were played at a venue in the Hutt Valley, which suited the Giants, as our training pitch was barely half-size. We caused a shock in our opening game by defeating the Hurricanes. Next up we tied the Chargers 26-26. It went downhill from there and we lost the rest of our games. Difficult to say why, but the Giants were not a harmonious bunch during my season in charge. There was a clash of personalities within the coaching staff, and a certain amount of immaturity among the players, I felt.
Something else I had organised during the off-season was a visit by a small college team from Nebraska, the Doane Tigers. This was a major undertaking, given our scant resources, and only made possible by further assistance from our pub charity sponsor. The Hurricanes and Chargers had declined to assist us.
Arriving in January 1992, the Tigers blitzed a Wellington Capitals team 82-6 in front of 1000 paying spectators at the Hutt Recreation Ground. The Capitals comprised the best players from our three teams, and included two guests: international rugby star Simon Mannix as kicker/punter, and former Utah State runningback Timo Tagaloa - who bolted half the length of the field for the home-side's only score. Jeff Green came on board as head coach.
A week later the Tigers played the Giants at the same venue, running out 89-0 winners in front of just a few hundred paying spectators. Curiously the Giants' jerseys disappeared on the morning of this game. Murray Sullivan came to the rescue with his Chargers' jerseys. Some of these were not returned by my players and team funds had to be used to replace them.
In another unsavoury incident that summer I was personally attacked by a Chargers lineman while helping umpire a game between the Hutt Valley and the Hurricanes. The assailant was forced to sit out the final, but no further action was taken against him.
By this time a new team was being organised in the town of Levin, some 60 miles (100km) north of Wellington. The individual who attacked me was one of a number of players who left the Chargers to join the new team.
Meetings were being held between delegates of the clubs on a regular basis. However, there was no league committee proper and the Levin delegation argued fiercely in defence of their player when the subject of the attack was raised.
The final, Capital Bowl II, was won by the Chargers, 12-6, over a much-improved Hurricanes.
At the end of the season I set up a Giants committee, then left the club to its own devices. I was not involved in the competition the following season, as I had accepted an invitation to go and train with the Tigers at Doane College (where I was also permitted to study literature, social-psychology and journalism and extend my stay the next year).
The Levin Tigers entered the league in my absence and won the competition in their debut season. They beat the Giants 21-7 in Capital Bowl III, Fijian rugby star Philip Reyasi running in three touchdowns.
A journalist by profession, I resumed writing newspaper articles on the league when I returned from Nebraska. But my services were not welcome at administrative level, apparently, which left me with no appetite for coaching, despite being approached by the Chargers. At 30 years of age, I had also decided to give up playing.
Doane College made a second visit to New Zealand in 1996, blitzing the Hurricanes 93-0 and defeating the Wellington representative team 42-6. By this time a regional committee was in place, and an annual inter-city encounter between Auckland and Wellington was underway, the former winning the first such clash, 17-10, at Wellington's biggest sports venue, Athletic Park.
I continued to write game reports for the newspapers right up until my departure from New Zealand in 1999. I have been teaching English in Europe since. From the internet I am able to ascertain that there are four teams in Wellington today, and that they continue to contest the Capital Bowl, which has been named in honour of Horst Maczuga - first commissioner of the regional committee and head coach of the Wellington team which upset Auckland 10-0 in 1999. A five-team high school league is also in place http://www.leaguelineup.com/welcome.asp?url=afsc .
I was 23-years-old then and knew nothing about the game. But I wanted to play it.
I advertised for players in the local paper and waited until I got someone capable of coaching before I brought everyone together.
We got between a dozen and two dozen players along to our Sunday afternoon practise sessions. This was in the summer, as most of us were winter-time rugby players. The coach seldom made it along, however.
National league basketball coach Jeff Green challenged us to a game against his crowd in the suburb of Wainuiomata. They included some members of his basketball team, among them two or three American imports. We lost 8-2 in a game played without equipment.
They visited us at our Rongotai College base a month later and again we lost.
The following season we moved to Porirua Hospital, where we were offered use of a rugby pitch with, oddly, Y-shaped goal posts such as those used in the American game. We played Jeff's team three times that summer, losing away then winning twice at home.
At the end of the season we set up a committee, became an incorporated society, and named our team the Harbour City Hurricanes.
We were still just a bunch of guys in T-shirts and track pants, without a real coach.
It was during our third season that we began to obtain some equipment. This was largely due to a loan from player and committee member Ken Turner. We also acquired a couple of non-playing expat North American coaches. Jeff's team were no more, so we turned our eyes to Auckland, the nation's biggest city, where a league was well-established with about 10 teams.
We made the 400 mile (650km) journey north in January 1990 for our first 'real' game of American football. We hired a mini-bus for the purpose, which broke down just short of our destination, and were billeted by the local team.
The Manukau Stallions had finished last in the Auckland league. They beat us 26-0.
We had precisely 11 helmets, so the players had to exchange them as they came on and off the field. About half the players had shoulder pads. I personally played linebacker and was totally confounded by the blockers, a concept I had not encountered before.
The Stallions visited us a month later and won 8-0 with a touchdown and a safety. This game was attended by Horst Maczuga, education officer at Porirua Police College, who had coached high school football in his native Ohio. He joined our committee and was appointed head-coach for the following season.
During the off-season I busied myself setting up Wellington's second team, the Hutt Valley Chargers, which included a few veterans of Jeff's old crowd. This resulted in some heated arguments between Horst and myself. I had already lost the confidence of some members of the committee due to the club's financial problems. These had resulted from an embezzlement of club funds by the original treasurer; something I had personally failed to detect. Needless to say, Ken's loan had yet to be repaid.
Horst's hand was greatly strengthened when, acting independently of the committee, he managed to secure funding sufficient to clear all debts and fit the entire squad out with equipment and new uniforms. It was indeed a giant leap forward for American football in Wellington.
I left the Hurricanes three years after setting them up and devoted myself to the Chargers. This time things fell into place a lot quicker. We got a big squad together in the spring of 1990, including non-playing coaches. Following Horst's lead, I managed to arrange pub charity funding to kit 22 players out. We played the Hurricanes at the end of the season, for a Capital Bowl trophy which I personally presented for competition, and were defeated 20-16. We also hosted Auckland's Bulldogs, losing 8-6. The Hurricanes, meanwhile, had hosted a team from the city of Hamilton (who played in the Auckland league), losing narrowly, then visited Auckland to take on the third-placed Rangers - who trounced them 97-0!
At the end of the season I set up a Chargers committee. Murray Sullivan, father of our quarterback, was elected president. I wished only to serve in the capacity of publicity officer, as I already had my sights set on establishing a third team. The Chargers did not elect me, however, uncomfortable with my intentions.
The new team would be established in urban Wellington and be known as the Capital City Giants. The Hurricanes had started there but moved east to Porirua. I obtained pub charity funding for the equipment and found a home base at the Teachers Training College in the suburb of Karori.
I then approached the Hurricanes and Chargers about setting up a league and a regional organisation. Surprisingly this met with resistance. The Chargers were for a league but against a regional organisation. The Hurricanes opposed both ideas, but eventually came around to the idea of a league.
All games were played at a venue in the Hutt Valley, which suited the Giants, as our training pitch was barely half-size. We caused a shock in our opening game by defeating the Hurricanes. Next up we tied the Chargers 26-26. It went downhill from there and we lost the rest of our games. Difficult to say why, but the Giants were not a harmonious bunch during my season in charge. There was a clash of personalities within the coaching staff, and a certain amount of immaturity among the players, I felt.
Something else I had organised during the off-season was a visit by a small college team from Nebraska, the Doane Tigers. This was a major undertaking, given our scant resources, and only made possible by further assistance from our pub charity sponsor. The Hurricanes and Chargers had declined to assist us.
Arriving in January 1992, the Tigers blitzed a Wellington Capitals team 82-6 in front of 1000 paying spectators at the Hutt Recreation Ground. The Capitals comprised the best players from our three teams, and included two guests: international rugby star Simon Mannix as kicker/punter, and former Utah State runningback Timo Tagaloa - who bolted half the length of the field for the home-side's only score. Jeff Green came on board as head coach.
A week later the Tigers played the Giants at the same venue, running out 89-0 winners in front of just a few hundred paying spectators. Curiously the Giants' jerseys disappeared on the morning of this game. Murray Sullivan came to the rescue with his Chargers' jerseys. Some of these were not returned by my players and team funds had to be used to replace them.
In another unsavoury incident that summer I was personally attacked by a Chargers lineman while helping umpire a game between the Hutt Valley and the Hurricanes. The assailant was forced to sit out the final, but no further action was taken against him.
By this time a new team was being organised in the town of Levin, some 60 miles (100km) north of Wellington. The individual who attacked me was one of a number of players who left the Chargers to join the new team.
Meetings were being held between delegates of the clubs on a regular basis. However, there was no league committee proper and the Levin delegation argued fiercely in defence of their player when the subject of the attack was raised.
The final, Capital Bowl II, was won by the Chargers, 12-6, over a much-improved Hurricanes.
At the end of the season I set up a Giants committee, then left the club to its own devices. I was not involved in the competition the following season, as I had accepted an invitation to go and train with the Tigers at Doane College (where I was also permitted to study literature, social-psychology and journalism and extend my stay the next year).
The Levin Tigers entered the league in my absence and won the competition in their debut season. They beat the Giants 21-7 in Capital Bowl III, Fijian rugby star Philip Reyasi running in three touchdowns.
A journalist by profession, I resumed writing newspaper articles on the league when I returned from Nebraska. But my services were not welcome at administrative level, apparently, which left me with no appetite for coaching, despite being approached by the Chargers. At 30 years of age, I had also decided to give up playing.
Doane College made a second visit to New Zealand in 1996, blitzing the Hurricanes 93-0 and defeating the Wellington representative team 42-6. By this time a regional committee was in place, and an annual inter-city encounter between Auckland and Wellington was underway, the former winning the first such clash, 17-10, at Wellington's biggest sports venue, Athletic Park.
I continued to write game reports for the newspapers right up until my departure from New Zealand in 1999. I have been teaching English in Europe since. From the internet I am able to ascertain that there are four teams in Wellington today, and that they continue to contest the Capital Bowl, which has been named in honour of Horst Maczuga - first commissioner of the regional committee and head coach of the Wellington team which upset Auckland 10-0 in 1999. A five-team high school league is also in place http://www.leaguelineup.com/welcome.asp?url=afsc .
Friday, February 23, 2007
Kurdish history
Part 1 (Whereas my other histories on this site are based on the writings of a wide variety of experts, this is based primarily on the contents of one particular volume, A Modern History of the Kurds by David McDowal which, it is worth bearing in mind, is freely available in Istanbul shops).
The Kurdish people are ethnically and linguistically akin to Iranians. They number between 24 and 27 million worldwide, with about half in Turkey, a quarter in Iran and a sixth in Iraq - the majority living in the mountainous regions around the common border of these three nations, the ethnographic 'Kurdistan.' A further one million are in Syria, many of them having migrated down from Anatolia.
Three quarters of Kurds are Sunni Muslims. The remainder, mostly in central Anatolia, are Alevi, a branch of the Shi'ite faith with influences from the Zoroastrian and Turkic Shaman religions dating back 3,500 years. Many belong to Sufi mystic brotherhoods, another pre-Islamic tie.
Their languages form a branch of the Indo-European Farsi family, but differ from one another in some cases as much as English and German do. Turkic and Arabic influences are evident, and there are also many distinct 'Kurdish' words. Some Kurdish dialects have more in common with Farsi than they do with other Kurdish dialects.
The Kurds are considered to have originated in and around Iran. Waves of these Indo-European tribes began migrating westward in the Second Million BC. Indo-Europeans linguistically; ethnically, like most peoples of Southern Asia, a hybrid of Australoid (who originated in South East Asia) and Caucasoid (who originated in Southern Russia).
Kurdish tribes, in fact, were on the receiving end of attacks from Sumer (Iraq) over 4,000 years ago. But little is really known of their history until the advent of Islam in the seventh century. The ninth century found them fighting alongside the (doomed) Sassanians of Persia, and they were soon absorbed into the Islamic Empire.
They frequently rebelled against their Arab rulers however, and in 866 actually captured the city of Mosul. At the same time, Kurds remained prominent in the Arab campaigns against Christian Byzantium, Armenia and the Crusades. Though they often grated with the Turkmen alongside whom they fought, they produced similarly fine officers, notably the great Saladin al-Din of Tikrit (Northern Iraq). Saladin routed the Crusades in the 12th century and founded the Ayyubid Dynasty which spanned Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Mecca and Diyarbakir (southern Turkey).
Saladin's rise coincided with the beginning of Arabic demise, and the Kurds now found themselves on the receiving end of Mongol and Turkish Seljuk raids, especially in Anatolia - where the entire population of Diyarbakir (Kurdistan's biggest city) was wiped out by one Mongol rampage.
Diyarbakir and other Kurdish settlements were sacked again by Tamerlane the Tartar in the 14th century, and there were further invasions in the 15th century. These edited highlights give a distorted overall picture, however. For the most part, Kurds were able to live a peaceful, pastoral existence.
A major turning point came early in the 16th century when the Ottoman Empire, approaching its zenith, defeated the Persian Safavids at the Battle of Chaldiran. Subsequent Alevi uprisings were put down by the Turks, in one instance leaving 40,000 dead. The Ottomans followed up with the capture of Tabriz.
This left Kurdistan as a virtual 'no-man's land' between the two empires. Henceforth, the Kurds were to come increasingly under the influence of the Turks. Many chose to defect to the Ottoman Empire of their own accord. Suleyman the Magnificent proceeded to take further Kurdish-occupied areas from the Persians, with 40,000 Kurdish fighters assisting in the capture of Baghdad in 1638. (On the other side of the border, the Kurdish Ardalan tribe were fighting for the Shah...).
The Baban Kurds, meanwhile, found themselves fighting on both sides in the Ottoman-Persian wars of the late eighteenth century. They were not mere tools of the empire, but proved well adept at playing the two off against each other.
At the beginning of the 19th century, Kurdistan itself had become the cause of conflict between the Sultan and the Shah. By then a new power had joined the fray; Russia with its designs on the Ottoman Empire, now in decline. Many Kurds joined the ranks of the Russians. Nomadic Kurdish bandits, meanwhile, had become the bane of Anatolia.
In the 1830s Mir Muhammad of Rawanduz ruthlessly hacked out a Kurdish Empire in Iraq and began to threaten Ottoman interests. The Turks, preoccupied with the Egyptian challenge on Syria, sought to appease him, even offering to make him Pasha of all Kurdistan. But Mir Muhammad marched right up the Tigris to the Anatolian frontier, at which point he was only forced to withdraw in order to quell a rebellion within his own domains. The Ottomans pursued him and he finally submitted in 1834, having been assured safe passage to Istanbul (he later disappeared without a trace).
The Egyptians, meanwhile, had routed the Ottomans, allowing the Kurdish tribe of Bader Khan of Buhtan to fill the void. After failing in his campaign against the Assyrians, he turned on the Nestorian Christians, committing two massacres. The initial Ottoman attack in response was repelled, but they returned two years later with a larger force and forced Bader Khan to surrender. He was exiled to the island of Crete.
The latter half of the century witnessed the rise of the Sufi Shaykhs within the Ottoman Empire. In 1880 Shaykh Ubaydallah of Nihri invaded Persia on behalf of the 'Kurdish Nation.' This began with a rebellion within Iran itself led by his son Abd al Qadir. The rebels advanced eastward with an army of 20,000, slaughtering 2,000 civilians at Miandoab and destroying some 2,000 villages along their way.
But before long most of the tribesmen in their ranks had returned to their homes, laden with booty, leaving a mere 1,500 to face the wrath of the Persian army, 12,000-strong. The Shaykh's remaining forces fled, many to be captured and killed. Ubaydallah was sent into exile and died in 1883.
The 19th century closed with the massacres of Armenian Christians throughout the Ottoman Empire, triggered by an aborted hostage-taking incident in Istanbul which had given Sultan Abd al Hamid a pretext to stoke fanaticism in order to secure his own status. The Hamidiya Cavalry, a regiment formed by the Sultan himself, were prominent among the Kurds who participated in the atrocities. Internationally the very word 'Kurd' had become synonymous with 'banditry.'
The Sultan's insistence on all-encompassing Ottoman nationality only strengthened the Kurdish quest for autonomy within the empire. In 1889 two Kurds were among the four founding members of the Committee for Union Progress (CUP), an organisation with similar objectives to the Young Turks.
The Kurdish duo were exiled to Tripoli in 1895 and escaped to Europe two years later. Abdallah Jadwat then wrote for Kurdistan, a European-based publication which also championed Armenian demands.
Meanwhile the Nihri, successors of Ubayd Allah, had formed an autonomous movement, also in exile, and a group of Kurdish youth instigated the Kurdish Hope Society, publishing the Rujd Kurd newspaper which enjoyed wide membership.
The Young Turk revolution in 1908, overthrowing Abd al Hamid, was cause for much celebration among the Kurdish community. Among other things, it brought an end to the age-old 'agha' system, which entailed village chiefs living as virtual princes within their domains, oppressing and exploiting their subjects at will.
However, some of the more extreme religious elements of Kurdish society, and withal the aghas themselves, were less pleased, and began to liaise with the Russians with a view to establishing an independent homeland for the Kurds in eastern Anatolia. The new Turkish government subsequently laid off the aghas, and a united Russian-Kurdish-Armenian front never did materialise.
During the First World War, Kurdistan became a battle ground. Russian-backed Armenians and Turkish-backed Kurds committed massacres against each another. Kurdish tribesmen were also enlisted to participate in the massacres of 1915, which some have termed the 'Armenian genocide.' Others, however, notably Alevi, offered shelter to the Armenian Christians.
The Kurds reward for assisting the Turkish army was, ironically, forced assimilation under the Young Turk government. This included a programme of dispersal, uprooting 700,000 Kurds from their villages, with as many as half of them perishing.
In all the depredations of war hit the Kurds particularly hard. Perhaps half a million died, many from cold and starvation, and this does not include the estimated 800,000 killed in battle.
The post-war Sykes-Picot Plot, a secret agreement between the governments of England and France (exposed by the Bolsheviks) involving the virtual partition of Turkey, threatened to leave Kurds scattered among a variety of European colonies. Kurdish designs on autonomy were therefore put on the backburner, as Islamic solidarity with the Turks became paramount.
The surprising Turkish victory led to the formation of the Turkish Republic within the borders we know today. The Kurds pushed their case at the Treaty of Luasanne (1923), but their pleas for autonomy fell on deaf ears.
Harsh reprisals followed a rebellion by Shaykh Said and his followers in 1924, including the repression of all forms of Kurdish nationalism. Between 1924 and 1938 all but one of the 18 military operations involving the Turkish army were carried out in Kurdistan. Kurdish sources claimed 200,000 died under 'deportation' from the region, with a further 15,000 villagers massacred.
In the late 20s the conflict moved to Mt Ararat, where the Kurds proclaimed a republic. This threatened to draw Turkey into war with Iran as the rebels sought refuge on the latter's side of the border. The Turks eventually drove the rebels off the mountain, with widespread executions in the aftermath.
Meanwhile in Iraq, Kurdish aims were scuppered by British, American and Turkish interest in the oil within the region. Sulaymaniya, in east Iraq, had gained a degree of self-rule under British rule. But their leader Shaykh Mahmud tried to seized full control and was sent into exile.
Pardoned and reinstated by the British in 1922, as a bulwark against the Turks, history repeated itself, as Mahmud again began to conspire against the colonial rulers. The British consequently bombed Sulaymaniya a number of times, forcing Mahmud to flee to the safety of the mountains. Riots followed in Sulaymaniya in 1930, leading to civilian deaths.
Indeed, at the signing of Iraqi independence in 1931, all promises to the Kurds in terms of political and cultural rights were forgotten. The League of Nations' acceptance of Iraq a year later was a further slap in the face of the Kurds.
The Barzan tribe, led by Shaykh Ahmad, proclaimed self-rule in 1932 and twice defeated the Iraqi forces. But the Iraqi's returned a third time, with the aid of British air support. The latter, using delayed action bombs in violation of the Hague Convention, caused widespread civilian carnage, and Ahmad was forced to surrender. His brothers continued the rebellion for another year, before surrendering under a generous amnesty.
A separate uprising on the part of the Khalil Khushawi Kurds, continued until 1936.
Back to Turkey where a Kurdish rebellion in the Anatolian province of Dersim had been quashed by aerial bombing in 1935. Casualties were estimated as high as 40,000 and comparisons were drawn to the treatment of Armenians two decades earlier. At that time Kurds accounted for 70% of East Anatolia's population.
In 1937 Turkey, Iraq and Iran signed a pact which reognised the established borders. No consideration was given to the Kurds.
In Iran as well there had been a series of post-World War I revolts, notably that of the Abdui Shikak. Backed by the Soviets, they remained the scourge of Iran until 1928, when the government betrayed and murdered their leader Simqu.
After the Second World War there was an uprising in Mahobad, also Soviet-backed. Following much turbulence, political scheming, inter-tribal conflict and warfare, this culminated in the formation of a tiny Kurdish Republic in 1945. Mahobad principal Qazi Muhammad, founder of the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran, was declared president.
But when the Soviets withdrew from Iran just one year later, the republic was left vulnerable. Inevitably there were skirmishes, providing Tehran with a pretext to send in the troops. Qazi Muhammad and others, including his brother and his cousin, were publicly hanged.
Following the 1958 coup in Iraq by General Abd al Karim Qasim, a Kurdish rebellion broke out (Kurds actually fought on both sides, against Qasim and for him). When Qasim was on his way out, the Kurds allied themselves with the Baath Party, who overthrew him in 1963.
But the Kurds were betrayed in subsequent negotiations, with the oil-rich region of Kirkuk proving an insurmountable obstacle. The Iraq army imposed martial law in Sulaymaniya, with many deaths and disappearances resulting.
The Kurds had been weakened by a division within their own ranks. Mulla Mustafa's rebels had driven the Kurdish Democratic Party across the border into Iran. But he permitted them back again when war resumed with Baghdad in the mid-60s. Fifteen thousand Kurds held out against a hundred thousand Iraqis, before president Abdul Salam Arif's death in a plane crash brought a temporary pause to the conflict.
Arif's brother Abdul Rahman took over and resumed the war. But not even the use of napalm and chemical weapons by his airforce could bring him victory, and his army stumbled to defeat at the hands of the Kurdish Peshmergas, losing hundreds.
Iraq prime minister Abdul Rahman al-Bazzaz signed a treaty so generous to Kurdish interests, including a 'map to autonomy,' that he was driven out of office by Rahman and the army.
In the early 70s the Baaths, with a young Saddam Husayn prominent, again promised the Kurds autonomy, including full national rights, only for negotiations to again founder. The Baaths then attempted to assassinate Mulla Mustafa, sending human bombs.
Mustafa survived this and, emboldened by promises of US support, declined all Baath conditions, leading to outright war in the mid-70s. Iraq's army was twice the size of the Kurds', and backed up by tanks and aircraft. But Iran backed the Kurds with a view to overthrowing the Baaths. The ensuing stalemate led to a truce in March 1975. This signalled the end of Mustafa's involvement in the Kurdish struggle.
Meanwhile in Iran, the collapse of the Pahlavi regime in the late 70s, brought about a new push for Kurdish autonomy there. Tehran viewed this as 'secession,' all negotiations failed, and an estimated 10,000 deaths resulted from clashes during the first two years of the Khomeini reign.
A further 200 Kurds died in clashes with the Azaris when they attempted to stage a rally in Naqada in 1979.
The following year the Iranian army launched a major assault on Kurdish regions, subduing the locals, though at major cost to themselves.
At the outset of the Iran-Iraq War, Kurds seized lands within Iran. By 1983, however, Tehran had reclaimed it all and the rebels were driven across the border into Iraq.
As Iran gained the upper hand in the war with Iraq, Saddam Huseyn, unable to negotiate assistance from the Kurds, and fearful they would assist the enemy, executed 8,000 young men of the Barzani tribe. By 1986, Iraqi Kurds were fighting for Iran, and in 1987 they captured the Dukan Valley.
Further atrocities against Kurdish civilians ensued, including arbitrary executions and the razing of villages. Receiving technnological assistance from the US, Iraq employed further use of chemical bombs. This intensified as Iran consolidated its advantage in the war, and Iraq was accused of genocide of Kurds with its use of concentration camps and mass graves .
By mid-1989 over half of Iraqi Kurdistan had been cleared of Kurds. Yet, despite irrefutable evidence of crimes against humanity, the international community failed to react, with the industrialized nations continuing to back Baghdad against Tehran. They were also eyeing the $50,000 million worth of reconstruction projects Iraq put out to tender as the war ground to its conclusion. Britain doubled its export credit facility to Iraq, while the US and various European nations continued to supply sensitive arms and equipment.
Neither did things improve for the Kurds in Iran at the conclusion of the war in 1988, nor even with Khomeini's death the following year. Indeed, a number of top Kurdish politicians were assassinated during this period.
Saddam's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 brought about a whole new chapter in Kurdish history in Iraq. Encouraged by American president George Bush (Sr), the Kurds rose up in rebellion. Iraq responded with massacres and further use of chemical warfare. The US stayed out of it, reluctant to alarm its allies Turkey and Saudi Arabia by being seen to support Kurds or Shi'is.
Turkey initially denied access to Kurdish refugees from Iraq. Iran, on the other hand, opened its border.
The Coalition belatedly imposed a safe-haven for Kurds in the north of Iraq, and neither the subsequent skirmishes with Saddam's troops nor economic pressure could prevent Kurdish autonomous elections going ahead.
Barzani and Talabani, leaders of the two main political groups, were appointed joint leaders of the autonomous government. The latter, acting unilaterally, then invited Turkey to annex the oil-rich region of 4 million inhabitants. Ankara, fighting its own war with Kurdish (PKK) rebels, declined, although it later provided some economic aid.
Skirmishes broke out between Barzani's followers and those of Talabani in 1993, with Iranian involvement, and continued into 1994.
Meanwhile in Iran, the situation finally began to improve for Kurds with the election of Islamic reformer Mohammad Khatami in 1997, notwithstanding a brutal response to protests over the capture of Abdullah Ocalan a year later.
Ocalan was the leader of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), which had turned to terrorist activity in Turkey in the early 1980s. Turkey appears to be winning the battle with the PKK, but the struggle is costing the nation US$10 billion a year and adversely effecting its EU bid and tourism industry.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Kurdish people are ethnically and linguistically akin to Iranians. They number between 24 and 27 million worldwide, with about half in Turkey, a quarter in Iran and a sixth in Iraq - the majority living in the mountainous regions around the common border of these three nations, the ethnographic 'Kurdistan.' A further one million are in Syria, many of them having migrated down from Anatolia.
Three quarters of Kurds are Sunni Muslims. The remainder, mostly in central Anatolia, are Alevi, a branch of the Shi'ite faith with influences from the Zoroastrian and Turkic Shaman religions dating back 3,500 years. Many belong to Sufi mystic brotherhoods, another pre-Islamic tie.
Their languages form a branch of the Indo-European Farsi family, but differ from one another in some cases as much as English and German do. Turkic and Arabic influences are evident, and there are also many distinct 'Kurdish' words. Some Kurdish dialects have more in common with Farsi than they do with other Kurdish dialects.
The Kurds are considered to have originated in and around Iran. Waves of these Indo-European tribes began migrating westward in the Second Million BC. Indo-Europeans linguistically; ethnically, like most peoples of Southern Asia, a hybrid of Australoid (who originated in South East Asia) and Caucasoid (who originated in Southern Russia).
Kurdish tribes, in fact, were on the receiving end of attacks from Sumer (Iraq) over 4,000 years ago. But little is really known of their history until the advent of Islam in the seventh century. The ninth century found them fighting alongside the (doomed) Sassanians of Persia, and they were soon absorbed into the Islamic Empire.
They frequently rebelled against their Arab rulers however, and in 866 actually captured the city of Mosul. At the same time, Kurds remained prominent in the Arab campaigns against Christian Byzantium, Armenia and the Crusades. Though they often grated with the Turkmen alongside whom they fought, they produced similarly fine officers, notably the great Saladin al-Din of Tikrit (Northern Iraq). Saladin routed the Crusades in the 12th century and founded the Ayyubid Dynasty which spanned Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Mecca and Diyarbakir (southern Turkey).
Saladin's rise coincided with the beginning of Arabic demise, and the Kurds now found themselves on the receiving end of Mongol and Turkish Seljuk raids, especially in Anatolia - where the entire population of Diyarbakir (Kurdistan's biggest city) was wiped out by one Mongol rampage.
Diyarbakir and other Kurdish settlements were sacked again by Tamerlane the Tartar in the 14th century, and there were further invasions in the 15th century. These edited highlights give a distorted overall picture, however. For the most part, Kurds were able to live a peaceful, pastoral existence.
A major turning point came early in the 16th century when the Ottoman Empire, approaching its zenith, defeated the Persian Safavids at the Battle of Chaldiran. Subsequent Alevi uprisings were put down by the Turks, in one instance leaving 40,000 dead. The Ottomans followed up with the capture of Tabriz.
This left Kurdistan as a virtual 'no-man's land' between the two empires. Henceforth, the Kurds were to come increasingly under the influence of the Turks. Many chose to defect to the Ottoman Empire of their own accord. Suleyman the Magnificent proceeded to take further Kurdish-occupied areas from the Persians, with 40,000 Kurdish fighters assisting in the capture of Baghdad in 1638. (On the other side of the border, the Kurdish Ardalan tribe were fighting for the Shah...).
The Baban Kurds, meanwhile, found themselves fighting on both sides in the Ottoman-Persian wars of the late eighteenth century. They were not mere tools of the empire, but proved well adept at playing the two off against each other.
At the beginning of the 19th century, Kurdistan itself had become the cause of conflict between the Sultan and the Shah. By then a new power had joined the fray; Russia with its designs on the Ottoman Empire, now in decline. Many Kurds joined the ranks of the Russians. Nomadic Kurdish bandits, meanwhile, had become the bane of Anatolia.
In the 1830s Mir Muhammad of Rawanduz ruthlessly hacked out a Kurdish Empire in Iraq and began to threaten Ottoman interests. The Turks, preoccupied with the Egyptian challenge on Syria, sought to appease him, even offering to make him Pasha of all Kurdistan. But Mir Muhammad marched right up the Tigris to the Anatolian frontier, at which point he was only forced to withdraw in order to quell a rebellion within his own domains. The Ottomans pursued him and he finally submitted in 1834, having been assured safe passage to Istanbul (he later disappeared without a trace).
The Egyptians, meanwhile, had routed the Ottomans, allowing the Kurdish tribe of Bader Khan of Buhtan to fill the void. After failing in his campaign against the Assyrians, he turned on the Nestorian Christians, committing two massacres. The initial Ottoman attack in response was repelled, but they returned two years later with a larger force and forced Bader Khan to surrender. He was exiled to the island of Crete.
The latter half of the century witnessed the rise of the Sufi Shaykhs within the Ottoman Empire. In 1880 Shaykh Ubaydallah of Nihri invaded Persia on behalf of the 'Kurdish Nation.' This began with a rebellion within Iran itself led by his son Abd al Qadir. The rebels advanced eastward with an army of 20,000, slaughtering 2,000 civilians at Miandoab and destroying some 2,000 villages along their way.
But before long most of the tribesmen in their ranks had returned to their homes, laden with booty, leaving a mere 1,500 to face the wrath of the Persian army, 12,000-strong. The Shaykh's remaining forces fled, many to be captured and killed. Ubaydallah was sent into exile and died in 1883.
The 19th century closed with the massacres of Armenian Christians throughout the Ottoman Empire, triggered by an aborted hostage-taking incident in Istanbul which had given Sultan Abd al Hamid a pretext to stoke fanaticism in order to secure his own status. The Hamidiya Cavalry, a regiment formed by the Sultan himself, were prominent among the Kurds who participated in the atrocities. Internationally the very word 'Kurd' had become synonymous with 'banditry.'
The Sultan's insistence on all-encompassing Ottoman nationality only strengthened the Kurdish quest for autonomy within the empire. In 1889 two Kurds were among the four founding members of the Committee for Union Progress (CUP), an organisation with similar objectives to the Young Turks.
The Kurdish duo were exiled to Tripoli in 1895 and escaped to Europe two years later. Abdallah Jadwat then wrote for Kurdistan, a European-based publication which also championed Armenian demands.
Meanwhile the Nihri, successors of Ubayd Allah, had formed an autonomous movement, also in exile, and a group of Kurdish youth instigated the Kurdish Hope Society, publishing the Rujd Kurd newspaper which enjoyed wide membership.
The Young Turk revolution in 1908, overthrowing Abd al Hamid, was cause for much celebration among the Kurdish community. Among other things, it brought an end to the age-old 'agha' system, which entailed village chiefs living as virtual princes within their domains, oppressing and exploiting their subjects at will.
However, some of the more extreme religious elements of Kurdish society, and withal the aghas themselves, were less pleased, and began to liaise with the Russians with a view to establishing an independent homeland for the Kurds in eastern Anatolia. The new Turkish government subsequently laid off the aghas, and a united Russian-Kurdish-Armenian front never did materialise.
During the First World War, Kurdistan became a battle ground. Russian-backed Armenians and Turkish-backed Kurds committed massacres against each another. Kurdish tribesmen were also enlisted to participate in the massacres of 1915, which some have termed the 'Armenian genocide.' Others, however, notably Alevi, offered shelter to the Armenian Christians.
The Kurds reward for assisting the Turkish army was, ironically, forced assimilation under the Young Turk government. This included a programme of dispersal, uprooting 700,000 Kurds from their villages, with as many as half of them perishing.
In all the depredations of war hit the Kurds particularly hard. Perhaps half a million died, many from cold and starvation, and this does not include the estimated 800,000 killed in battle.
The post-war Sykes-Picot Plot, a secret agreement between the governments of England and France (exposed by the Bolsheviks) involving the virtual partition of Turkey, threatened to leave Kurds scattered among a variety of European colonies. Kurdish designs on autonomy were therefore put on the backburner, as Islamic solidarity with the Turks became paramount.
The surprising Turkish victory led to the formation of the Turkish Republic within the borders we know today. The Kurds pushed their case at the Treaty of Luasanne (1923), but their pleas for autonomy fell on deaf ears.
Harsh reprisals followed a rebellion by Shaykh Said and his followers in 1924, including the repression of all forms of Kurdish nationalism. Between 1924 and 1938 all but one of the 18 military operations involving the Turkish army were carried out in Kurdistan. Kurdish sources claimed 200,000 died under 'deportation' from the region, with a further 15,000 villagers massacred.
In the late 20s the conflict moved to Mt Ararat, where the Kurds proclaimed a republic. This threatened to draw Turkey into war with Iran as the rebels sought refuge on the latter's side of the border. The Turks eventually drove the rebels off the mountain, with widespread executions in the aftermath.
Meanwhile in Iraq, Kurdish aims were scuppered by British, American and Turkish interest in the oil within the region. Sulaymaniya, in east Iraq, had gained a degree of self-rule under British rule. But their leader Shaykh Mahmud tried to seized full control and was sent into exile.
Pardoned and reinstated by the British in 1922, as a bulwark against the Turks, history repeated itself, as Mahmud again began to conspire against the colonial rulers. The British consequently bombed Sulaymaniya a number of times, forcing Mahmud to flee to the safety of the mountains. Riots followed in Sulaymaniya in 1930, leading to civilian deaths.
Indeed, at the signing of Iraqi independence in 1931, all promises to the Kurds in terms of political and cultural rights were forgotten. The League of Nations' acceptance of Iraq a year later was a further slap in the face of the Kurds.
The Barzan tribe, led by Shaykh Ahmad, proclaimed self-rule in 1932 and twice defeated the Iraqi forces. But the Iraqi's returned a third time, with the aid of British air support. The latter, using delayed action bombs in violation of the Hague Convention, caused widespread civilian carnage, and Ahmad was forced to surrender. His brothers continued the rebellion for another year, before surrendering under a generous amnesty.
A separate uprising on the part of the Khalil Khushawi Kurds, continued until 1936.
Back to Turkey where a Kurdish rebellion in the Anatolian province of Dersim had been quashed by aerial bombing in 1935. Casualties were estimated as high as 40,000 and comparisons were drawn to the treatment of Armenians two decades earlier. At that time Kurds accounted for 70% of East Anatolia's population.
In 1937 Turkey, Iraq and Iran signed a pact which reognised the established borders. No consideration was given to the Kurds.
In Iran as well there had been a series of post-World War I revolts, notably that of the Abdui Shikak. Backed by the Soviets, they remained the scourge of Iran until 1928, when the government betrayed and murdered their leader Simqu.
After the Second World War there was an uprising in Mahobad, also Soviet-backed. Following much turbulence, political scheming, inter-tribal conflict and warfare, this culminated in the formation of a tiny Kurdish Republic in 1945. Mahobad principal Qazi Muhammad, founder of the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran, was declared president.
But when the Soviets withdrew from Iran just one year later, the republic was left vulnerable. Inevitably there were skirmishes, providing Tehran with a pretext to send in the troops. Qazi Muhammad and others, including his brother and his cousin, were publicly hanged.
Following the 1958 coup in Iraq by General Abd al Karim Qasim, a Kurdish rebellion broke out (Kurds actually fought on both sides, against Qasim and for him). When Qasim was on his way out, the Kurds allied themselves with the Baath Party, who overthrew him in 1963.
But the Kurds were betrayed in subsequent negotiations, with the oil-rich region of Kirkuk proving an insurmountable obstacle. The Iraq army imposed martial law in Sulaymaniya, with many deaths and disappearances resulting.
The Kurds had been weakened by a division within their own ranks. Mulla Mustafa's rebels had driven the Kurdish Democratic Party across the border into Iran. But he permitted them back again when war resumed with Baghdad in the mid-60s. Fifteen thousand Kurds held out against a hundred thousand Iraqis, before president Abdul Salam Arif's death in a plane crash brought a temporary pause to the conflict.
Arif's brother Abdul Rahman took over and resumed the war. But not even the use of napalm and chemical weapons by his airforce could bring him victory, and his army stumbled to defeat at the hands of the Kurdish Peshmergas, losing hundreds.
Iraq prime minister Abdul Rahman al-Bazzaz signed a treaty so generous to Kurdish interests, including a 'map to autonomy,' that he was driven out of office by Rahman and the army.
In the early 70s the Baaths, with a young Saddam Husayn prominent, again promised the Kurds autonomy, including full national rights, only for negotiations to again founder. The Baaths then attempted to assassinate Mulla Mustafa, sending human bombs.
Mustafa survived this and, emboldened by promises of US support, declined all Baath conditions, leading to outright war in the mid-70s. Iraq's army was twice the size of the Kurds', and backed up by tanks and aircraft. But Iran backed the Kurds with a view to overthrowing the Baaths. The ensuing stalemate led to a truce in March 1975. This signalled the end of Mustafa's involvement in the Kurdish struggle.
Meanwhile in Iran, the collapse of the Pahlavi regime in the late 70s, brought about a new push for Kurdish autonomy there. Tehran viewed this as 'secession,' all negotiations failed, and an estimated 10,000 deaths resulted from clashes during the first two years of the Khomeini reign.
A further 200 Kurds died in clashes with the Azaris when they attempted to stage a rally in Naqada in 1979.
The following year the Iranian army launched a major assault on Kurdish regions, subduing the locals, though at major cost to themselves.
At the outset of the Iran-Iraq War, Kurds seized lands within Iran. By 1983, however, Tehran had reclaimed it all and the rebels were driven across the border into Iraq.
As Iran gained the upper hand in the war with Iraq, Saddam Huseyn, unable to negotiate assistance from the Kurds, and fearful they would assist the enemy, executed 8,000 young men of the Barzani tribe. By 1986, Iraqi Kurds were fighting for Iran, and in 1987 they captured the Dukan Valley.
Further atrocities against Kurdish civilians ensued, including arbitrary executions and the razing of villages. Receiving technnological assistance from the US, Iraq employed further use of chemical bombs. This intensified as Iran consolidated its advantage in the war, and Iraq was accused of genocide of Kurds with its use of concentration camps and mass graves .
By mid-1989 over half of Iraqi Kurdistan had been cleared of Kurds. Yet, despite irrefutable evidence of crimes against humanity, the international community failed to react, with the industrialized nations continuing to back Baghdad against Tehran. They were also eyeing the $50,000 million worth of reconstruction projects Iraq put out to tender as the war ground to its conclusion. Britain doubled its export credit facility to Iraq, while the US and various European nations continued to supply sensitive arms and equipment.
Neither did things improve for the Kurds in Iran at the conclusion of the war in 1988, nor even with Khomeini's death the following year. Indeed, a number of top Kurdish politicians were assassinated during this period.
Saddam's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 brought about a whole new chapter in Kurdish history in Iraq. Encouraged by American president George Bush (Sr), the Kurds rose up in rebellion. Iraq responded with massacres and further use of chemical warfare. The US stayed out of it, reluctant to alarm its allies Turkey and Saudi Arabia by being seen to support Kurds or Shi'is.
Turkey initially denied access to Kurdish refugees from Iraq. Iran, on the other hand, opened its border.
The Coalition belatedly imposed a safe-haven for Kurds in the north of Iraq, and neither the subsequent skirmishes with Saddam's troops nor economic pressure could prevent Kurdish autonomous elections going ahead.
Barzani and Talabani, leaders of the two main political groups, were appointed joint leaders of the autonomous government. The latter, acting unilaterally, then invited Turkey to annex the oil-rich region of 4 million inhabitants. Ankara, fighting its own war with Kurdish (PKK) rebels, declined, although it later provided some economic aid.
Skirmishes broke out between Barzani's followers and those of Talabani in 1993, with Iranian involvement, and continued into 1994.
Meanwhile in Iran, the situation finally began to improve for Kurds with the election of Islamic reformer Mohammad Khatami in 1997, notwithstanding a brutal response to protests over the capture of Abdullah Ocalan a year later.
Ocalan was the leader of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), which had turned to terrorist activity in Turkey in the early 1980s. Turkey appears to be winning the battle with the PKK, but the struggle is costing the nation US$10 billion a year and adversely effecting its EU bid and tourism industry.
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Wednesday, February 7, 2007
My take on the Iraq attack
I have lived in both America and Britain, among many countries, and the following is not intended as an indictment of the populace of either, least of all the individuals I encountered.
I retain a particular affection for my pals back in the States, whose generosity paved the way
for one of the major turning points of my life. I have, of course, met many fine English people.
What I am offering is my personal view on the behaviour of the current regimes of those
countries, and, to a lesser degree, certain cultural patterns and media trends which did not fail to disturb me.
The signs had always been there. But with the illegal and murderous invasion of Iraq in March 2003 America and Britain fully cast aside their sheep's clothing. Two nations, with histories steeped in genocide, slavery, land-theft, massacres and other such evils, had paraded as the good guys for two generations. Hitler drew them into World War II, then proceeded to let them off the hook with his ill-fated invasion ofthe Soviet Union.
The USSR, with an enormous sacrifice, did more than any other nation to turn the Third Reich around. Politcally alienated by the West, they received scant credit for it in the aftermath.
The Americans would claim the glory for themselves, as would the British. They would be perceived as the cowboys on white horses: the Americans, with an ideology
conducive to conformity, prejudice and hatred; the British, with their nationalism, falseness and hypocrisy.
They share, above all, a craving to be admired and a complete lack of regard for human life.
The invasion of Iraq was based on a deception. It has resulted in the deaths of scores of thousands, accompanied by atrocities, torture and cold-blooded murder.
The catastrophic results of the attack on Iraq were lucidly forseeable. Tens of millions
demonstrated beforehand all around the world. The masses were ignored by the handful in Washington and London.
Worst of all, the provision of adequate security measures for civilians was neglected by their so-called 'liberators.' The governments of America and Britain simply did not care.
For half a century many were fooled. Fear of communism was frequently trotted out as justification for similarly horrific crimes against humanity. But no such "threat" exists now. The ravenous wolves are there and plain to see. Neither America nor Britain has ever been the good guy.
Let that not stop the Bush regime, author of the greatest evil in recent history, condemning others which have actually harmed no one. What constitutes an Axis of Evil? The wholesale
slaughter of innocent civilians, or potential threat to American interests...?
In 1980 America and England boycotted the Olympics because the host nation was in the process of an illegal invasion. Now England wins the right to host the event - whilst participating in an illegal invasion. In the midst of this murderous invasion, they even attempted to discredit another city's bid because of racial chants at a football match.
The psychopathic killers pointing the finger at shoplifters.
What is the basis of American and British arrogance? Might makes Right? White makes Right, perhaps? Have we not progressed beyond the point where a handful of right-wingers can take it upon themselves to tell the rest of the world how to behave?
The international community needs to look elsewhere for leadership. America and Britain cannot be trusted and must not be followed.
End
I retain a particular affection for my pals back in the States, whose generosity paved the way
for one of the major turning points of my life. I have, of course, met many fine English people.
What I am offering is my personal view on the behaviour of the current regimes of those
countries, and, to a lesser degree, certain cultural patterns and media trends which did not fail to disturb me.
The signs had always been there. But with the illegal and murderous invasion of Iraq in March 2003 America and Britain fully cast aside their sheep's clothing. Two nations, with histories steeped in genocide, slavery, land-theft, massacres and other such evils, had paraded as the good guys for two generations. Hitler drew them into World War II, then proceeded to let them off the hook with his ill-fated invasion ofthe Soviet Union.
The USSR, with an enormous sacrifice, did more than any other nation to turn the Third Reich around. Politcally alienated by the West, they received scant credit for it in the aftermath.
The Americans would claim the glory for themselves, as would the British. They would be perceived as the cowboys on white horses: the Americans, with an ideology
conducive to conformity, prejudice and hatred; the British, with their nationalism, falseness and hypocrisy.
They share, above all, a craving to be admired and a complete lack of regard for human life.
The invasion of Iraq was based on a deception. It has resulted in the deaths of scores of thousands, accompanied by atrocities, torture and cold-blooded murder.
The catastrophic results of the attack on Iraq were lucidly forseeable. Tens of millions
demonstrated beforehand all around the world. The masses were ignored by the handful in Washington and London.
Worst of all, the provision of adequate security measures for civilians was neglected by their so-called 'liberators.' The governments of America and Britain simply did not care.
For half a century many were fooled. Fear of communism was frequently trotted out as justification for similarly horrific crimes against humanity. But no such "threat" exists now. The ravenous wolves are there and plain to see. Neither America nor Britain has ever been the good guy.
Let that not stop the Bush regime, author of the greatest evil in recent history, condemning others which have actually harmed no one. What constitutes an Axis of Evil? The wholesale
slaughter of innocent civilians, or potential threat to American interests...?
In 1980 America and England boycotted the Olympics because the host nation was in the process of an illegal invasion. Now England wins the right to host the event - whilst participating in an illegal invasion. In the midst of this murderous invasion, they even attempted to discredit another city's bid because of racial chants at a football match.
The psychopathic killers pointing the finger at shoplifters.
What is the basis of American and British arrogance? Might makes Right? White makes Right, perhaps? Have we not progressed beyond the point where a handful of right-wingers can take it upon themselves to tell the rest of the world how to behave?
The international community needs to look elsewhere for leadership. America and Britain cannot be trusted and must not be followed.
End
Saturday, February 3, 2007
Spanish history
A brief overview of the history of Spain
Spain was initially settled during the Neolithic period by Indo-Europeans from either the eastern Mediterannean or North Africa, and Celts and Basques from central and western Europe.
The earliest known civilization in Spain was that of Tartessos, at the mouth of the Guadalquivir River in Andalusia. The Tartessians spoke a language unrelated to any other.
They came into contact with Phoenician traders around 3000 years ago. The name Spain derives from the Phoenician word for a species of hare then prevalent on the peninsula.
It is thought the city of Tartessos was destroyed by Phoenicia's successor, Carthaginia, in the sixth century BC.
The Phoenicians were credited with the founding of Cadiz in south-west Spain in the 11th century BC.
Two centuries later the Greeks began setting up colonies in north-east Spain, such as Emporion near modern-day Girona and the river Ebro. The name of the river, derived from the Basque word for 'valley,' was to become the Greek name for the peninsula, 'Iberia.'
The Carthaginians settled in the south-east (notably Cartagena) and soon found themselves at war with the Greeks.
The Romans invaded in 218 BC, encountering not only the Carthaginians, but also fierce resistance from native Iberians, Celts and Lusitanians (the latter having arrived from France four centuries earlier).
The Second Punic War in which Rome defeated Carthage, and the Roman Civil War in which Julius Caesar vanquished Pompey, were both fought mostly on Spanish territory.
It would take the Romans two centuries to subdue the peninsula. This they did under Caesar Augustus, after whom the city of Zaragoza is named.
Five centuries of Roman occupation ensued, the 'Pax Romana,' during which Spain developed into a fully civilized, cosmopolitan, Latin-speaking society. Christianity was adopted in the first century.
With the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 5th century, the Visigoths took power, establishing Toledo as their capital and driving out their Germanic kinsmen, Vandals and Suevi, along with the Alans from Iran. However, the Suevi survived in the north-west (Galicia), while the Vandals and Alans settled in the south (the former giving their name to 'Vandalusia').
Latin language, law and culture remained strong throughout the Visigoth era, and the power of the church grew markedly, as it did elsewhere in Medievel Europe.
In 710 the last Visigoth king, Roderic, drove the Byzantines out of south-east Spain, only to be killed a year later at the onset of the Moorish invasions.
The Moors, primarily Berbers (indigenous north-west Africans) under Arab leadership, arrived in 711. The fragility of Visigoth rule was exposed as they surged on to reach the Pyrenees within eight years. Only the Basques held out.
During the reign of the Umayyads (previously based at Damascus, and whose empire extended as far as India), Cordoba was easily the most advanced city in Europe. From this Moorish capital vast innovations were introduced to the Christian world in terms of medicine, mathematics, astronomy and agriculture.
The Christian Reconquest actually began in the decade of the Moorish occupation, led by Pelayo, King of the Asturias. But it would require almost 800 years to complete. Toledo was taken in 1085 and Cordoba a century-and-a-half later. By the middle of the 13th century the Muslim territories had been reduced to Granada, a province which survived another 250 years as a vassal state of Christian Spain.
In 1492, the same year Columbus discovered America, the Christians drove the last of the Muslims out, resulting in the virtual reunification of Catholic Spain. The Moors were offered the choice of conversion or expulsion, as were the Jews, 200,000 of whom were expelled during the infamous Inquisition.
So it was that by the end of the 15th century Isabella and Ferdinand had recaptured the last vestiges of Muslim Spain, reunited much of the peninsula (for the first time since Roman rule), and gained a host of new colonies, notably, of course, the Americas with their lucrative silver mines.
The stage was set for the first truly global empire in world history. Its armies ruled the battlefields of Europe and the Americas, and its navy dominated the oceans. Francisco Pizzaro is credited with conquering the (divided) Inca Empire with an army of just 180 men.
At its height the Spanish Empire's territories encompassed South and Central America, parts of North America and East Asia, all of the Iberian peninsula, Germany, Holland and Belgium, southern Italy and Sicily.
This occured in the reign of Charles V (Carlos I), first Habsburg king of united Spain. He was the son of Philip I and Joanna the Mad and the grandson of Maximillian I.
Durng the reign of his successor Phillip II (who moved the capital from Toledo to Madrid in 1561), Spain joined Italy in a 'Holy' alliance which defeated the hitherto indomitable Ottomans in the sea Battle of Lepanto. The great Spanish writer Cervantes, himself wounded in action, described it as 'the end of Turkish invincibility.'
Phillip II sent the Spanish Armada against Elizabeth's England in 1588 to avenge English support for Dutch rebels in the Spanish Netherlands. The so-called 'Invincible Fleet' of 130 warships, firstly decimated by a storm, was routed by the British naval squadron under Francis Drake, with support from the Dutch.
This was not the turning point in history some (Protestant) historians would have us believe. However, the Bourbon dynasty had reversed many of the enlighened reforms introduced by Isabella and Ferdinand, and this was to sew the seeds of the empire's gradual decline..
Incessant warfare in Europe, the stifling domination of church and nobility, and economic problems (caused in no small part by the discovery of the Americas), saw the beginning of Spain's decline in the 17th century.
Portugal won its independence in 1640, Holland followed suit at the conclusion of the 80 Years War, and the 30 Years War between Europe's Protestants and Catholics resulted in the liberation of the German provinces.
The death of Charles II at the dawn of the 18th century led to the War of the Spanish Succession, waged primarily between the French Bourbons and the Austro-Hungarians, heirs of the Holy Roman Empire.
The latter, backed by England and Holland, gained the upper hand, forcing a truce in 1714 which saw the loss of further Spanish colonies, though the Bourbons remained on the throne.
The remainder of the century witnessed a steady recovery of the Spanish economy, with Bilbao and Barcelona in the north overhauling Cadiz in the south as the main centres of industry. Spain also prospered by supporting the American colonies in their victorious War of Independence against Britain.
Spain in the early 19th century alligned itself with Napoleon Bonaparte, brought to power by the French Revolution. Their combined naval forces were destroyed by a Britain fleet under Horatio Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar near Gibraltar.
Charles IV was overthrown in the Mutiny of Aranjuez and replaced by his son Ferdinand VII. This displeased Napoleon, who forced both monarchs to renounce the throne, then placed his brother Joseph upon it.
This, in turn, triggered the Spanish War of Independence (Peninsula War), which began the same year with the nationalist uprising in Madrid. The Spanish were no match for Napoleon, but earned a reprieve with the emperor's ill-fated invasion of Russia. Wellington's Anglo-Portuguese army, combined with tenacious guerilla warfare on the part of the Spaniards themselves, finally ended French occupation in 1814. Ferdinand was returned to the throne.
The Napoleonic wars had major repercussions for Spain: economic distaster, the emergence of governmental rule more or less free of royal interference (a constitution was signed in Cadiz as early as 1812), and the loss of most of its remaining colonies in the Americas.
By 1825 only Cuba and Puerto Rico remained under Spanish rule. And these would be lost to the United States at the end of the century in the Spanish-American war. This war, believed to have been ignited by an accidental explosion which sunk the USS Maine, blamed on the Spanish, signalled the arrival of America as a major force in world affairs. They took Puerto Rico, the Phillipines and Guam from the Spanish, while Cuba gained independence, albeit under American restrictions.
Spain did gain some territories in north-west Africa early in the 20th century, but was checked in 1921 by the 'Disaster of Annual' during the Rif War in Morocco. Spanish forces were ambushed by Riffian warriors, losing as many as 20,000 men (to the enemy's 1000), including their general, Manuel Fernandez Silvestre. The remainder fled, leaving behind vital stocks of weaponry. The defeat ended the Spanish Protectorate in the region and triggered a political crisis in Madrid.
Left-right tensions continued into the 1930s with political assassinations rife. Under the Republican leadership of Manuel Azana, Spaniards enjoyed liberal democracy and both Catalan and Basque nationalists were able to flex their muscles. However, the government's land reforms ran into strong opposition from land-owners, leading to civil unrest, strikes and the formation of anarchist unions. The Republicans were also at loggerheads with the Military, the monarchists and the church, three pillars of traditional Spanish society. In 1932 there was a failed military coup.
Azana was returned to power in 1936 as head of a Republican-Socialist coalition, giving rise to the fascist Spanish Phalanx organization, the Nationalist party of Primo de Rivera. The Falangists murdered Jose Castillo of the anti-fascist movement, whose members shot dead right-wing leader Calvo Sotelo in retaliation.
Three days later an army uprising began in Spanish Morocco, led by General Francisco Franco, and spread into the Balaeric and Canary Islands. The Spanish Civil War had begun in earnest. While the majority of the population supported the government, the outcome would ultimately be decided by the military's support of the Nationalists, infighting between the Republicans and Socialists themselves, and foreign involvement.
The Nationalists were actively supported by Germany and Italy, the former bombing Guernica in the Basque Country (immortalized by the Pablo Picasso painting); the latter providing an air squadron and as many as 60,000 troops.The government's appeals to England and France fell on deaf ears, although arms were provided (at a heavy price) by the USSR, sympathetic to the socialist element.
In a bitterly-fought campaign the Fascists gained the upper hand, defending the Alcazar in Toledo and laying siege to Madrid, forcing the government to abandon the capital for Valencia.
The following year they took Bilbao and Santander, effectively sealing off the north, and Malaga in the south, although the Republicans fought back to hold Madrid and recapture nearby Segovia.
In February 1938 Franco emerged victorious at the pivotal battle of Teruel, thus reaching the Mediterranean and dissecting the enemy-held portion of Spain. The government was forced to move again, this time to Barcelona, but by the end of the year the Nationalists were invading Catalonia. The region fell in January 1939, and Madrid and Valencia soon followed, forcing the Republicans' surrender.
Franco showed no mercy. As many as 28,000 leftists were executed and thousands more imprisoned for life. The dictator was to rule with an iron fist until his death in 1975.
The first half of his regin was marked by economic depression owing to political isolation. Transformation began in 1953 when a military alliance with Eisenhower resulted in financial aid from the US and admission to the UN two years later.
During the 1960s Spain began to tap into its huge potential for tourism. The impact was no less signficant on the national psyche. In what became known as the 'Swedish Revolution,' consersative Catholic values began to give way to more liberal attitudes as northern Europeans invaded the Mediterranean Coast. The 'Spanish Miracle' was underway.
Two years before his death Franco stepped down as prime minister, though remaining head of state and commander of the military. His intended successor, the like-minded Luis Carrero Blanco, was blown up in his car by an ETA bomb planted beneath the road. The Basque terrorist organization had been increasingly active since the 1960s, and would continue its attacks in the post-Franco era.
The dictator named Prince Carlos the Bourbon his successor as head of state, ignoring the rightful claim of his father and king-in-exile, Don Juan. After Franco's death Carlos would delight the majority of Spaniards by pushing through democratic reforms and instigating the development of a capitalist society.
The first elections of the post-Franco era in 1977 were won by a Democratic coalition under Adolfo Suarez, who had previously run the government of Carlos. The Basque and Catalonian nationalist parties also fared well.
A group of officers from the Guardia Civil (a military organization which had evolved into a police force in the time of Franco) attempted a military coup in 1981, holding congress at gunpoint and rolling tanks into Valencia. Carlos further endeared himself to his subjects at this time with his televised 'Over my Dead Body' speech. The coup failed.
In 1982, the year Spain hosted football's World Cup, the Socialist party came to power and laid the groundwork for Spain's inclusion in the EU, which came about four years later. In 1992 Barcelona hosted the Olympic Games.
Spain began the 21st century as one of the world's most liberal societies, with its relaxed way of life and a peace-loving population enjoying a high standard of living due in no small part to the 60 million tourists it receives each year.
Spain was initially settled during the Neolithic period by Indo-Europeans from either the eastern Mediterannean or North Africa, and Celts and Basques from central and western Europe.
The earliest known civilization in Spain was that of Tartessos, at the mouth of the Guadalquivir River in Andalusia. The Tartessians spoke a language unrelated to any other.
They came into contact with Phoenician traders around 3000 years ago. The name Spain derives from the Phoenician word for a species of hare then prevalent on the peninsula.
It is thought the city of Tartessos was destroyed by Phoenicia's successor, Carthaginia, in the sixth century BC.
The Phoenicians were credited with the founding of Cadiz in south-west Spain in the 11th century BC.
Two centuries later the Greeks began setting up colonies in north-east Spain, such as Emporion near modern-day Girona and the river Ebro. The name of the river, derived from the Basque word for 'valley,' was to become the Greek name for the peninsula, 'Iberia.'
The Carthaginians settled in the south-east (notably Cartagena) and soon found themselves at war with the Greeks.
The Romans invaded in 218 BC, encountering not only the Carthaginians, but also fierce resistance from native Iberians, Celts and Lusitanians (the latter having arrived from France four centuries earlier).
The Second Punic War in which Rome defeated Carthage, and the Roman Civil War in which Julius Caesar vanquished Pompey, were both fought mostly on Spanish territory.
It would take the Romans two centuries to subdue the peninsula. This they did under Caesar Augustus, after whom the city of Zaragoza is named.
Five centuries of Roman occupation ensued, the 'Pax Romana,' during which Spain developed into a fully civilized, cosmopolitan, Latin-speaking society. Christianity was adopted in the first century.
With the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 5th century, the Visigoths took power, establishing Toledo as their capital and driving out their Germanic kinsmen, Vandals and Suevi, along with the Alans from Iran. However, the Suevi survived in the north-west (Galicia), while the Vandals and Alans settled in the south (the former giving their name to 'Vandalusia').
Latin language, law and culture remained strong throughout the Visigoth era, and the power of the church grew markedly, as it did elsewhere in Medievel Europe.
In 710 the last Visigoth king, Roderic, drove the Byzantines out of south-east Spain, only to be killed a year later at the onset of the Moorish invasions.
The Moors, primarily Berbers (indigenous north-west Africans) under Arab leadership, arrived in 711. The fragility of Visigoth rule was exposed as they surged on to reach the Pyrenees within eight years. Only the Basques held out.
During the reign of the Umayyads (previously based at Damascus, and whose empire extended as far as India), Cordoba was easily the most advanced city in Europe. From this Moorish capital vast innovations were introduced to the Christian world in terms of medicine, mathematics, astronomy and agriculture.
The Christian Reconquest actually began in the decade of the Moorish occupation, led by Pelayo, King of the Asturias. But it would require almost 800 years to complete. Toledo was taken in 1085 and Cordoba a century-and-a-half later. By the middle of the 13th century the Muslim territories had been reduced to Granada, a province which survived another 250 years as a vassal state of Christian Spain.
In 1492, the same year Columbus discovered America, the Christians drove the last of the Muslims out, resulting in the virtual reunification of Catholic Spain. The Moors were offered the choice of conversion or expulsion, as were the Jews, 200,000 of whom were expelled during the infamous Inquisition.
So it was that by the end of the 15th century Isabella and Ferdinand had recaptured the last vestiges of Muslim Spain, reunited much of the peninsula (for the first time since Roman rule), and gained a host of new colonies, notably, of course, the Americas with their lucrative silver mines.
The stage was set for the first truly global empire in world history. Its armies ruled the battlefields of Europe and the Americas, and its navy dominated the oceans. Francisco Pizzaro is credited with conquering the (divided) Inca Empire with an army of just 180 men.
At its height the Spanish Empire's territories encompassed South and Central America, parts of North America and East Asia, all of the Iberian peninsula, Germany, Holland and Belgium, southern Italy and Sicily.
This occured in the reign of Charles V (Carlos I), first Habsburg king of united Spain. He was the son of Philip I and Joanna the Mad and the grandson of Maximillian I.
Durng the reign of his successor Phillip II (who moved the capital from Toledo to Madrid in 1561), Spain joined Italy in a 'Holy' alliance which defeated the hitherto indomitable Ottomans in the sea Battle of Lepanto. The great Spanish writer Cervantes, himself wounded in action, described it as 'the end of Turkish invincibility.'
Phillip II sent the Spanish Armada against Elizabeth's England in 1588 to avenge English support for Dutch rebels in the Spanish Netherlands. The so-called 'Invincible Fleet' of 130 warships, firstly decimated by a storm, was routed by the British naval squadron under Francis Drake, with support from the Dutch.
This was not the turning point in history some (Protestant) historians would have us believe. However, the Bourbon dynasty had reversed many of the enlighened reforms introduced by Isabella and Ferdinand, and this was to sew the seeds of the empire's gradual decline..
Incessant warfare in Europe, the stifling domination of church and nobility, and economic problems (caused in no small part by the discovery of the Americas), saw the beginning of Spain's decline in the 17th century.
Portugal won its independence in 1640, Holland followed suit at the conclusion of the 80 Years War, and the 30 Years War between Europe's Protestants and Catholics resulted in the liberation of the German provinces.
The death of Charles II at the dawn of the 18th century led to the War of the Spanish Succession, waged primarily between the French Bourbons and the Austro-Hungarians, heirs of the Holy Roman Empire.
The latter, backed by England and Holland, gained the upper hand, forcing a truce in 1714 which saw the loss of further Spanish colonies, though the Bourbons remained on the throne.
The remainder of the century witnessed a steady recovery of the Spanish economy, with Bilbao and Barcelona in the north overhauling Cadiz in the south as the main centres of industry. Spain also prospered by supporting the American colonies in their victorious War of Independence against Britain.
Spain in the early 19th century alligned itself with Napoleon Bonaparte, brought to power by the French Revolution. Their combined naval forces were destroyed by a Britain fleet under Horatio Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar near Gibraltar.
Charles IV was overthrown in the Mutiny of Aranjuez and replaced by his son Ferdinand VII. This displeased Napoleon, who forced both monarchs to renounce the throne, then placed his brother Joseph upon it.
This, in turn, triggered the Spanish War of Independence (Peninsula War), which began the same year with the nationalist uprising in Madrid. The Spanish were no match for Napoleon, but earned a reprieve with the emperor's ill-fated invasion of Russia. Wellington's Anglo-Portuguese army, combined with tenacious guerilla warfare on the part of the Spaniards themselves, finally ended French occupation in 1814. Ferdinand was returned to the throne.
The Napoleonic wars had major repercussions for Spain: economic distaster, the emergence of governmental rule more or less free of royal interference (a constitution was signed in Cadiz as early as 1812), and the loss of most of its remaining colonies in the Americas.
By 1825 only Cuba and Puerto Rico remained under Spanish rule. And these would be lost to the United States at the end of the century in the Spanish-American war. This war, believed to have been ignited by an accidental explosion which sunk the USS Maine, blamed on the Spanish, signalled the arrival of America as a major force in world affairs. They took Puerto Rico, the Phillipines and Guam from the Spanish, while Cuba gained independence, albeit under American restrictions.
Spain did gain some territories in north-west Africa early in the 20th century, but was checked in 1921 by the 'Disaster of Annual' during the Rif War in Morocco. Spanish forces were ambushed by Riffian warriors, losing as many as 20,000 men (to the enemy's 1000), including their general, Manuel Fernandez Silvestre. The remainder fled, leaving behind vital stocks of weaponry. The defeat ended the Spanish Protectorate in the region and triggered a political crisis in Madrid.
Left-right tensions continued into the 1930s with political assassinations rife. Under the Republican leadership of Manuel Azana, Spaniards enjoyed liberal democracy and both Catalan and Basque nationalists were able to flex their muscles. However, the government's land reforms ran into strong opposition from land-owners, leading to civil unrest, strikes and the formation of anarchist unions. The Republicans were also at loggerheads with the Military, the monarchists and the church, three pillars of traditional Spanish society. In 1932 there was a failed military coup.
Azana was returned to power in 1936 as head of a Republican-Socialist coalition, giving rise to the fascist Spanish Phalanx organization, the Nationalist party of Primo de Rivera. The Falangists murdered Jose Castillo of the anti-fascist movement, whose members shot dead right-wing leader Calvo Sotelo in retaliation.
Three days later an army uprising began in Spanish Morocco, led by General Francisco Franco, and spread into the Balaeric and Canary Islands. The Spanish Civil War had begun in earnest. While the majority of the population supported the government, the outcome would ultimately be decided by the military's support of the Nationalists, infighting between the Republicans and Socialists themselves, and foreign involvement.
The Nationalists were actively supported by Germany and Italy, the former bombing Guernica in the Basque Country (immortalized by the Pablo Picasso painting); the latter providing an air squadron and as many as 60,000 troops.The government's appeals to England and France fell on deaf ears, although arms were provided (at a heavy price) by the USSR, sympathetic to the socialist element.
In a bitterly-fought campaign the Fascists gained the upper hand, defending the Alcazar in Toledo and laying siege to Madrid, forcing the government to abandon the capital for Valencia.
The following year they took Bilbao and Santander, effectively sealing off the north, and Malaga in the south, although the Republicans fought back to hold Madrid and recapture nearby Segovia.
In February 1938 Franco emerged victorious at the pivotal battle of Teruel, thus reaching the Mediterranean and dissecting the enemy-held portion of Spain. The government was forced to move again, this time to Barcelona, but by the end of the year the Nationalists were invading Catalonia. The region fell in January 1939, and Madrid and Valencia soon followed, forcing the Republicans' surrender.
Franco showed no mercy. As many as 28,000 leftists were executed and thousands more imprisoned for life. The dictator was to rule with an iron fist until his death in 1975.
The first half of his regin was marked by economic depression owing to political isolation. Transformation began in 1953 when a military alliance with Eisenhower resulted in financial aid from the US and admission to the UN two years later.
During the 1960s Spain began to tap into its huge potential for tourism. The impact was no less signficant on the national psyche. In what became known as the 'Swedish Revolution,' consersative Catholic values began to give way to more liberal attitudes as northern Europeans invaded the Mediterranean Coast. The 'Spanish Miracle' was underway.
Two years before his death Franco stepped down as prime minister, though remaining head of state and commander of the military. His intended successor, the like-minded Luis Carrero Blanco, was blown up in his car by an ETA bomb planted beneath the road. The Basque terrorist organization had been increasingly active since the 1960s, and would continue its attacks in the post-Franco era.
The dictator named Prince Carlos the Bourbon his successor as head of state, ignoring the rightful claim of his father and king-in-exile, Don Juan. After Franco's death Carlos would delight the majority of Spaniards by pushing through democratic reforms and instigating the development of a capitalist society.
The first elections of the post-Franco era in 1977 were won by a Democratic coalition under Adolfo Suarez, who had previously run the government of Carlos. The Basque and Catalonian nationalist parties also fared well.
A group of officers from the Guardia Civil (a military organization which had evolved into a police force in the time of Franco) attempted a military coup in 1981, holding congress at gunpoint and rolling tanks into Valencia. Carlos further endeared himself to his subjects at this time with his televised 'Over my Dead Body' speech. The coup failed.
In 1982, the year Spain hosted football's World Cup, the Socialist party came to power and laid the groundwork for Spain's inclusion in the EU, which came about four years later. In 1992 Barcelona hosted the Olympic Games.
Spain began the 21st century as one of the world's most liberal societies, with its relaxed way of life and a peace-loving population enjoying a high standard of living due in no small part to the 60 million tourists it receives each year.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Ottoman history
Turkey is among the oldest continuously inhabited regions of the world, and boasts one of the earliest known civilizations at Catal Huyuk, which dates back as far as the dawn of Sumerian civilization in Iraq.
Just as it is a cultural crossroads today, so it was thousands of years ago. Archaelogical evidence indicates it was settled during the Neolithic period from three different directions - Hatti from the north (Caucasia), Hittites from the east (Iraq), and Ionians from the west (Greece). Ilus II of the Greek Dardanian dynasty is credited with the founding of Troy as a trading post .
The Hittites established Turkey's first major empire almost 4,000 years ago and achieved a notable military victory over Egypt at Kadesh in the time of Ramesses II (leading to what is regarded as the first truce in world history). The Persians invaded in the 6th and 5th centuries BC, before the arrival of Alexander the Greek in the 4th century BC.
Turkey remained for the most part in Greek hands until the coming of the Romans. It continued to weather invasions from all sides, just as it had throughout the Hittite and Persian periods, and it was the Celtic Gauls of Western Europe who first made Ankara (Angora) their capital.
Istanbul was founded by Greek explorers in the 7th century BC and named in honour of their king, Byzas. Byzantium, the city, fell to the Romans in the 2nd century AD, and in 324 the emperor Constantine made it eastern capital of the newly divided Roman Empire.
It thus became the home of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. During the reign of Justinian I in the mid-6th century the Byzantine Empire encompassed the Mediterranean, with colonies in the Middle East, North Africa, Spain, Italy, Greece, the Balkans, the Ukraine and Anatolia.
Arch-enemies included the Bulgars, whose 9th century khan Krum killed Emperor Nikephoros in the Battle of Pliska and turned his skull into a drinking cup. Emperor Basil II earned the nickname 'Bulgar-Slayer' two centuries later, after capturing 15,000 Bulgars at the Battle of Kleidon, blinding all but 150 of them, and sending them back to their ruler, who died of a stroke.
The first Turks began to arrive in the 9th century, having wandered across Asia from their homelands along the Chinese and Mongolian frontiers. Turks, in fact, were prominent in the Mongolian armies of Ghengis Khan.
Among the first Turkic tribes were the Seljuks, who had previously ruled parts of Central Asia and Persia, including the fabled capital Samarkand, and converted to Islam. In 1071, under Alp Aslan, they inflicted a stunning defeat on the Byzantines at Manzikert in eastern Anatolia.
Byzantium earned a reprieve when the Seljuks were devastated in turn by the Mongols. The Mongols did not remain, allowing various other Turkic tribes to fill the void. These included the Osmanli (Ottomans), who would later become the most powerful empire on earth.
The Ottomans were very patient and spent half a millenia pushing across Anatolia and on into Europe. They drew others into their empire so that by the time they had reached the Balkans they were already a hybrid race, as much Greek, Bulgar, Russian and Persian as Turkic.
Osman is credited with founding the empire, while his son Orkhan first brought them into Europe, crossing the Dardenelles into Thrace and the Bosphorus to surround Constantinople. In this the Turks found themselves allied to the Catalan Empire, then at its height with a colony at Gallipoli, which sought to avenge the murder of its military hero Roger de Flor at the hands of Byzantine Emperor Michael Palaeologus .
Orkhan's successor Murad was the first of the great Ottoman emperors. He expanded into both Asia and Europe at the same time. His army suffered an early setback against the Serbs and Bosnians in the Battle of Kosovo, but eventually regrouped to destroy the Slavs. A turning point in the battle was the inexplicable withdrawal of Serbian troops by their chief's son-in-law Vuk Brankovic.
Murad did not live to celebrate the victory. Fighting with his men, though 70, he was assassinated by another of the Serb leader's sons-in-law Milosh Obilic. This one had been accused of conspiracy and was so desperate to prove his loyalty he deliberately got captured by the Turks, drew upon his status to demand an audience with Murad, then flew forth and stabbed him twice. Murad lived long enough, however, to know victory was assured.
In accordance with his wishes, the Ottomans treated their victims with lenience and tolerance, and so a Pax Ottomanica prevailed for some centuries. It was a time of great progression throughout the empire.
Sultan Bayezid repelled the last of the Crusades, which was instigated by the Hungarians as the Ottomans reached their border after conquering Serbia in the late 14th century. (The first Crusades, in fact, were not against Islam but against Eastern Orthodox Christians, including the capture of Constantinople in 1204, and later extending into the Balkans, all at the whim of the Pope in Rome and financed by Italian banks, principally in Genoa).
The Crusaders, with their French chevaliers in the vanguard, stormed through Serbia and Bulgaria virtually unopposed, then laid seige to Nicopolis, Bulgaria - scene of many an ancient Greek battle. It had been so easy they grew complacent, forgot about the Ottomans and began to party and squabble among themselves.
Bayezid, preoccupied with his seige of the last remnants of Byzantium at Constantinople, had been slow to react. But now, the emperor known as "Thunderbolt" lived up to his name and appeared suddenly at Nicopolis with an army of 200,000.
The French chevaliers gallantly rode forth to meet him, managed a few initial victories (Bayezid's tactic was to put his less adept and more dispensable troops out front), and found themselves in the midst of the giant Ottoman army, which duly annihilated them. The Hungarians, who had disagreed with the French on tactics, fled the scene. The last Crusade was over.
Bayezid returned to his seige of Constantinople (he first called it Istanbul which, despite sounding Asiatic, is actually a corruption of the Greek name for the city), but, just as victory was within grasp, he was distracted again - and this time fatally.
In the spirit of his ancestor Ghengis the Mongol, Timur the Tatar had come sweeping unopposed across Asia, forming an empire that extended from China to Hungary in the north and India to Palestine in the south. Its capital was at Samarkand (situated in what is today Uzbekistan).
Timur, a cripple, actually had no designs on the Ottoman Empire, which he respected, and whose religion his own people shared. Bayezid, who had known nothing but victory, was conversely arrogant, and invaded a city allied to the Tatars. Timur attempted to negotiate but the sultan rebuffed him.
Timur therefore recaptured the city by force. Bayezid marched his army across Anatolia to meet him. While he was doing so, the Tatars craftily circled around behind, completely evading the Ottoman scouts. Bayezid then made one final blunder. Contrary to his usual tactic of luring the enemy with a soft front, he sent his prized Anatolian cavalry. They were not only his finest, they were of Tatar stock, and they promptly defected to the other side.
The subsequent rout of the mighty Ottomans, which included the capture, humiliation and eventual death of Bayezid, could have spelt the end of the Ottomans in Turkey, just as the Mongol rampage two centuries earlier had driven their Seljuk forerunners out for good. But Timur himself died shortly after and the Tatars, never much interested in Anatolia in the first place, departed.
So it was that Bayezid's son Mehmed, followed in turn by his son, the great Fatih Mehmed, swiftly re-established the Ottoman empire throughout its former territories. It went on to conquer many more, as far afield as Morocco, Hungary and Persia, and including, finally, Constantinople.
The Ottomans enlisted the aid of a Hungarian, Urban, to build monstrous cannons for them, which could not only bust down the Roman walls, but also protect the Bosphorus. In 1453 they finally took Constantinople.
Meanwhile the Mamluks (ex-Circassian Turkic slaves turned conquerors) had taken Egypt. Theirs became the first army to repel the Mongols. But they fell to the Ottomans in the time of Selim the Grim.
Selim's successor Suleyman (Solomon Turkified) the Magnificent was among the greatest of the sultans. Ascending to the throne in the early 16th century through the then common practice of fratricide, he was grandson of the great Fatih Mehmed. Suleyman was the first to capture Belgrade and the Christian stronghold of Rhodes.
Amazingly, they never defeated the Knights of St Johns, the tiny group of elite soldiers who had held out on Rhodes for centuries with vague hopes of some day reclaiming Jerusalem for Christianity. In fact, the knights were a considerable nuisance to Ottoman shipping. So the mighty Ottoman army moved in for the kill. They were not successful, repeatedly frustrated by an impenetrable defence. Finally the knights agreed to negotiate (though they would later encounter the Ottomans again, on their new homeland Malta).
The Ottomans suffered similar embarrassments elsewhere, in Egypt, Persia, the Balkans and Italy, but invariably, in the end, their perserverence paid off. Less obstinate were the Hungarians, who they crushed on various occasions, taking advantage of divisions within the isolated kingdom (and avenging the defeat of Mehmed II, who had suffered a rare reversal at Belgrade in 1456) only to retreat back through the mountains to fight another enemy at home or else in Asia.
It was in 1529 that they arrived at the gates of Vienna, with a force outnumbering their opponents three to one. Suleyman's troops had travelled through the Balkans during a particularly harsh winter and were not in great shape. They encountered fierce resistance from the Europeans, with Poles to the fore, and were eventually forced to retreat. It was Suleyman's first decisive defeat, although the Ottomans did return for another, half-hearted attempt which never quite reached Vienna itself.
Europe still feared the giant Ottoman army and it was the Bohemian king and Hungarian pretender Ferdinand who first proposed a truce, even agreeing to pay a pension to the sultan. Suleyman refused and vowed to pursue Charles V. Though he would come to accept that Vienna - 700 miles away across the Balkans - was beyond the reach of a sultan in Istanbul.
Suleyman's final years were spent battling the Portuguese off Mesopotamia - with limited success. On Malta, the French-led knights held out heroically until the Spanish arrived to chase the Ottomans away and inflict upon Suleyman his greatest humilition. He returned to his favorite hunting ground, Hungary, where his forces consolidated their territory - and where he died in 1572, in the midst of his 13th campaign (3rd against Hungary).
Meanwhile Barbarossa, a chieftain from the Barbary Coast of North Africa, had allied himself to Suleyman. After a combined Christian force defeated him at Tunis in 1535, he retaliated by leading a combined Ottoman-Berber force (Berber's are indigineous to North-West Africa and comprised the vast majority of the Moors who, under Arab leadership, settled in Spain) into thes Balaeric Islands.
Barbarossa's Ottoman-Berbers, antagonised by attacks on their own vessels in the Mediterranean, next attacked Italy, principally Sardinia and Venice, but could not occupy it. The Christians, under the Pope and Charles V, then put a huge fleet to sea, easily outnumbering the enemy. But when the battle began they inexplicably fled from Barbarossa, undone by internal bickering.
The Mediterranean remained an Ottoman lake for a generation. Barbarossa went on to defeat Charles' forces again at Algiers (with help of a hurricane) then in 1543 arrived in the heart of Western Europe by landing at Marseille, with the approval of Frances I, Charles' arch enemy. They proceeded to turn Toulon into Constantinople II, practicing their own religion there and even trading in Christian slaves! They then invaded, sacked and burnt Nice. Eventually Frances was obliged to bribe them back to Istanbul. Barbarossa died two years later.
Suleyman's successor, Selim the Sot, preferred to get drunk in his harem while his grand vizier took care of business. But he overruled his plans to recapture Tunis from the Spanish and instead ordered an invasion of Venitian Cyprus. This was achieved at far greater cost to themselves than the enemy, and in fact only after agreeing to a truce then betraying it by killing the enemy leader during negotiations.
The Spanish-Italian victory over the Ottomans in the sea battle of Lepanto, 1571, was a tremendously costly battle for both sides, but the eventual victory of Don John's Christians over the Turks of Ali Pasha (who died in the battle) was a turning point in history. Cervantes, himself wounded in the battle, described it as the "End of Turkish invicincibility." All of Christian Europe celebrated, including the French, who were more or less allied to the Turks, and the distant backwater of England.
The Ottoman Empire was stunned and dismayed. Even Selim, the short fat Sultan of dubious parentage whose reign began the empire's decline, paused from his debauchery for a few days to fast and give prayer. He then ordered a massacre of all Spaniards and Venetians in his dominion, though fortunately the Grand Vizier dissuaded him.
Not quite the end of the Ottomans. They defeated the Portuguese at Morocco, killing their king Sebastain in battle. Selim also died at this time, not in warfare, but by slipping over in a drunken stupor and cracking his head on the marble bathroom floor. A not inappropriate end to the least distinguished of all sultans.
His eldest son Murad III took over, after having his many brothers executed, scared the Christians off Cyprus and took Georgia and Daghestan, but failed to hold onto Persia.
Onto the 16th and early 17th centuries; we find Murad IV, having indirectly succeeded his older brother, Osman, butchering 25,000 of his own people in a brutal reign of terror. He certainly avenged himself on his subjects, who had imprisoned then killed Osman in the first instance of regicide in Ottoman history.
So bloodthirsty became Murad he ordered summary executions for the slightest disturbance; such as the drowning of a group of young women whose song and laughter reached his ears and irritated them. But iron-fisted Murad did succeed in restoring law and order throughout his empire, lacking during the reigns of his brother and insane uncle.
A large powerful figure in the image of Porus (the Indian giant who had heroically battled Alexander from the back of his elephant, then later become the Greek's ally), Murad fought alongside his troops in the reclamation of Baghdad. He was the first sultan since Sulyman to serve in battle, and was said to have taken on the largest of the Persians in single combat before the battle and slain him with his first blow. After the victory, he massacred all prisoners and civilians.
Murad died just 28 years old. His end was hastened by excesses of alcohol, though he had enforced prohibition on his subjects! The empire then fell into decline. His final wish was to have his only surviving brother Ibrahim executed, but it was not then carried out, the worse for the empire.
Ibrahim was ruled by his harem, with whom he became obsessed. His avarice for jewellery and fur enitrely corrupted him. He executed his Grand Vezier (the first sultan ever to do so), a hero of the Baghdad campaign, for displeasing a lady of his harem on some trivial matter. Meanwhile his troops were away fighting interminable wars with the Russians on the Crimea and the Italians on Crete.
Inevitably Ibrahim, who had refused to heed earlier warnings, became the empire's second victim of regicide, in 1648, dying imprisoned just as his eldest brother had done. With his death the absolute despotism of the sultans came to an end, and the empire began to recover.
It was never to recapture its former glory, however, as signified by an early 17th century treaty with the Habsburg's. For the first time the Ottoman's were forced to negotiate as equals, and actually came off slightly the worse with the loss of some of their Hungarian terrain.
No longer a threat to Western Europe, which was too wartorn itself to take advantage of the Ottoman demise, it became a key player in the continent's politics and commerce, even signing an (anti-Spanish) alliance and free-trade pact with Elizabeth I in far-off Britain. A century after the discovery of America had wrenched Europe out of the Middle Ages, the Ottomans began to follow.
Interesting to examine the repercussions of Ibrahim's execution. Evidently this shook the sultanate to its core. No more the totalitarian sultan. Ibrahim's son Mehmet IV ascended to the throne at the age of 14 and created the Köprülü - Grand Vezir with greatly enhanced powers which basically became the head of government.
The first Köprülü, also named Mehmet, executed 35,000 in a reign of terror reminiscent of Sultan Murad. Sultan Mehmed was no warrior. He preferred to hunt while the Köprülü led military campaigns. Mehmed the Köprülü recaptured several islands from the Venetians.
The second Köprülü was Ahmet, and his military achievements would rival those of the greatest sultans, Fatih Mehmet and Suleyman the Magnificent. He took Belgrade with the help of neighbouring Christian regions who welcomed the Ottomans as liberators from Habsburg tyranny. In this manner they continued, surging on through Transylvania and Hungary and right into Austria itself. But in 1664 they were defeated while trying to cross the Raab enroute to Vienna.
Leading the Austrian defence were the French. The Ottomans took one look at their clean-shaven faces and powdered wigs and jokingly asked "Who are these young girls?" But the French dandies, battle-hardened veterans of the Thirty Years War, cut them down and inflicted upon the Ottomans their first major defeat ever in Central Europe (although the Treaty was, as usual, favorable to the Ottomans, and they lost little).
Ahmet then led the recapture of Crete from a Venitian-French alliance, finally ending a seige which had endured quarter of a century - longer than Troy - and turning the Eastern Mediterranean into an Ottoman lake. They were welcomed by the Greek inhabitants as liberators from the Pope.
Next on the agenda was the Crimea, now in Polish hands. The Cossack (originally Kazakh) inhabitants of Ukraine sought Ottoman protection from Polish and Russian tyranny. Ahmet attempted to negotiate with the Polish King and the Russian Tsar, but when this failed he marched north to do battle.
Joined by Tatars and the Cossacks themselves, the Ottomans had surprisingly little difficulty in seeing off the Poles and Russians, and recaptured most of what is the modern Ukraine in 1676. The empire was in the best shape, territorially, that it had been since the time of Suleyman more than a century before.
Following the death of the great Köprülü, Sultan Mehmed IV broke with precedent and exercised his prerogative of appointing the Grand Vezier himself.
Thus came to power Black Mustafa, his son-in-law, an entirely corrupted individual with a harem numbering a mind-boggling 1500. Mustafa harbored grandiose ambitions of outdoing the great Suleyman and taking Vienna and Rome.
But, in reality, he was a poor soldier and promptly squandered a lot of the terrain won by his Köprülü predecessors. This included the Ukraine, taken just five years earlier. The Ottomans were driven out by the Russians with vast losses of men.
This did not greatly concern Mustafa, who already had his eye on Vienna. At the bequest of the Hungarian Protestants, he marched his army north to wage war against the Habsburgs in 1683. It was to be the last Muslim onslaught on Christian Europe.
Mustafa first ignored the advice of the Khan of Tatar and the Pash of Buda and strode directly on to Vienna before consolidating the territories in between. But he hesitated before attacking the city, knowing that if Vienna were taken in battle the booty would go to his army, but if the enemy could be forced to surrender the booty would go to he, Mustafa, the sultan's man in Austria. Whilst he hesitated thus, the Germans arrived to support the Austrians and the Poles were on their way.
Guns were used in this battle. The Ottomans' were inferior, nullifying the advantage of their superior numbers. So they resorted to mining, a tactic highly successful in Ottoman history.
The situation was becoming critical for the defense when the Poles arrived, and here Mustafa messed up disastrously. He just pretended they were not there; carried on with the job at hand while the new arrivals crossed the Danube unopposed and set themselves up for a downhill assault.
The outcome was a rout. The Tatars fled, the Hungarians followed, and most of the Ottomans went with them. The Janissaries stayed and fought to the death, of course, but the rest of the Ottoman army hightailed it. 10,000 were left dead on the field. The Turks also neglected to take their sacks of coffee, and this resulted in the establishment of the first Viennese coffee shop. (The croissant also originated in Vienna, shaped thus to celebrate victory over the Turks).
The Poles pursued them down through Hungary, and no fewer than 7,000 Ottomans perished when a bridge of boats crossing the Danube collapsed beneath them. This led directly to the surrender of Gran, an Ottoman possession since the time of Suleyman.
Mustafa executed the Pash as a scapegoat. Sultan Mehmed executed Mustafa.
In wider terms, the devastating defeat, the worst ever suffered by the Ottomans in central Europe, ended their prestige as an invading force and indeed they were never to return.
The Ottomans, under Suleyman II (his brother Mehmed was forced into exile following the aforementioned disasters) and the 3rd Köprülü, Mustafa Zade, did regain Belgrade and all of Serbia while the Habsurgs were preoccupied with the William of Orange saga.
But in 1691 they suffered another devastating loss at the hands of Ludwig's Austrians and their superior musketry, Mustafa himself being shot through the head whilst leading a charge. Meanwhile Peter the Great was beginning to challenge Ottoman naval domination of the Black Sea.
Suleyman II soon died, was followed by his brother Ahmed II, who also soon died, and thus came to power young Mustafa, son of Mehmed IV. Mustafa II made a promising start by securing the area around Belgrade. But just one year later the Ottomans were again smashed by the Austrians, losing 30,000 men (10,000 drowned) at the Battle of Zenta where the Grand Vezir was killed and the Janissaries mutineed.
Fortunately for the Ottomans, the Europeans were still preoccupied with their own conflicts, with the War of the Spanish Succession now underway, and again failed to follow through when they had the Turks at their mercy. In fact, the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699 merely enforced the status quo with regards to territory, and the Ottomans retained most of the Balkans and scraps of Hungary and the Ukraine.
The Europeans had also come to realise that, after three centuries, the Ottoman threat had finally come to an end. They had fallen well off the pace in every department, politically, socially, economically, militarily. The Ottomans, for their part, knew this and accepted it. They might have slept soundly too, but for one man:
Peter the Great still lurked in the background, disgrunted with the Treaty in which he had been a minor player, eying the Black Sea with a path to the Mediterranean. Looking to establish himself as the Caesar of Constantinople - emperor of the 3rd Roman Empire, he set his sights on the capture of Istanbul.
Russia, at the dawn of the 18th century, was emerging as a modern industrialized imperial nation. Europe, entirely, had turned the tables on the Ottomans. No more the city states and feudal system the Turks had so easily overcome, but now the industrialized, battle-hardened nations with their big ships and mobile field artillery.
The Balkans appealed to Peter for help against, not the Turks, but the Austrian Catholics. They did not fear the Ottomans, who permitted them a fair degree of liberty, religious and otherwise.
The Russians, not quite ready to help out the Balkans, were nonetheless encroaching upon the Black Sea, which the Ottomans wished to retain as a lake. Meanwhile, a revolt at Adrianople led to the abdication of Mustafa II.
Mustafa's departure paved the way for the arrival of his brother, Ahemed III, who ruled very capably for a generation.
In 1711 Russia entered the Ottoman territory of Moldavia in persuit of Swedes following their triumph over the Scandinavian kingdom. The Turks responded swiftly, so swiftly that they caught the enemy unaware and had Peter the Great himself surrounded before he knew it. The Tsar actually went to pieces, suffering epileptic seizures as he contemplated certain defeat, the loss of all his territories and perhaps even his own enslavement.
The Ottomans, preoccupied with a Safavid invasion, were less interested in killing off the Russians, and were happy to sign a treaty which kept them out of the Black Sea. Thus peace was established for the next quarter of a century.
The Ottomans were, however, eyeing their former possessions in Greece, now under Venitian occupation. The Italian city state was in decline, ripe for the taking. Indeed, the Turks were barely troubled in recapturing their islands, plus Corinth, Morea and Crete (1714).
But in doing so they violated their treaty with the Habsburgs and the Austrians were drawn into the conflict. The Ottomans won the first round, at Karlowitz, before the tables were turned at Peterwardein, where the Grand Vezir was slain.
The Austrians then proceeded to kick the last of the Ottomans out of Hungary and recapture Belgrade. The latter was achieved against the odds, through the brilliant tactics of the French-born prince Eugen, who had tasted victory over the Ottomans before.
The subsequent treaty, in 1718, saw the Ottomans' European possessions reduced to little more than Bulgaria and much of Greece. But the real losers were the Venitians, who were not given back any of their territories. It was their death-knell as a European power.
Despite a string of shattering losses to the Austrians, the Ottomans made a remarkable comeback in the 1730s, overcoming technological military deficiencies, largely through the advice and influence of their French allies.
The Ottomans had found themselves threatened on two fronts. Their 25 year treaty having expired, the Russians were pushing their troops down toward the Black Sea. Meanwhile, the Austrians were taking back the last vestiges of Ottoman territory in the Balkans.
A Russian-Habsburg alliance offered the Ottomans an ultimatum. Hand over the Black Sea to the former and the Balkans to the latter. This, however, threatened French commercial interests in the Mediterranean, as the Russians were also demanding free passage through the Marmara.
It was the French who encouraged the Ottomans to march against the Austrians, and this they did, led by the Frenchman Comte de Bonneval. Here they managed a series of surprising victories, and eventually recaptured all their Balkan territories, including the big prize, Belgrade.
The Russian onslought, in contrast, was checked only by extreme hot weather and disease. On the western front, they were creeping toward Turkey through Poland and Moldavia - even as the Austrians were surrendering.
The two armies came face to face at the Danube. The Ottomans were 200,000 and flush from victory. The Russians wisely offered to compromise, and it was the French, who had brokered a favorable deal for the Ottomans with the Austrians, who did the same again at the Treaty of Belgrade.
The Ottomans kept their Black Sea lake and were also given back the Crimea and Moldavia. The Russians merely gained a new chunk of the Ukraine.
The Ottoman Empire had been saved from the point of complete annihilation, with powerful enemies approaching from two fronts, and regained much of the territory (and face) lost in those devastating defeats to Prince Eugen's Austrians earlier in the 18th century.
Following the partition of Poland between Prussia and Russia in the 1760s Catherine the Great sent her troops into Ottoman territory in pursuit of fleeing Poles. There they massacred not only Poles but Turks. Sultan Mustafa III declared war, though his army was run down and well off the pace. The Crimean Tatars achieved some early victories over the Russians, but the Ottomans took a licking between the Dniester and Danube.
Catherine's dream was to "liberate" Greece from the Ottomans. She attempted this with the help of the British, fighting against the French-backed Turks. They landed in Greece in 1770 and butchered the local Turks. The Ottomans sent the troops in and drove the Russians straight back out.
The Russians had more success on water, destroying the Ottoman fleet in the Mediterranean, partly through the assistance of an unsuspected fire-ship under British pilot. But, instead of following through, they hesitated at the mouth of the Dardanelles, giving the Turks time to fortify. The Russians eventually laid siege to the fortress and were closing on victory when Hassan of Algiers led the Corsairs out from Istanbul and surprised them in the trenches.
The Russians continued to make progress in the Balkans and Black Sea regions, however, taking Moldavia, Wallachia and basically everything else north of the Danube, plus another chunk of the Ukraine in which fierce battles reduced the Tatar population by two thirds.
They then proceeded to overrun the Crimea itself, without resistance, and also captured Georgia, thereby claiming the northern half of the Black Sea coast.
Alarmed European powers stepped in to broker a peace deal, but negotiations broke down when Mustafa refused to cede the Muslim stronghold of Crimea. Instead, in 1773, he brought Muhinzada Pasha, hero of Morea, back into the frame and campaigned successfully against the Russians in Bulgaria.
In 1774 the Russians crushed the Ottoman army in the Balkans, leaving the sultan (Abdul Hamid, in fact - Mustafa III had died in action the previous year) no option but to sign a treaty along the same lines as the one rejected two years earlier, losing the Crimea.
On the surface the deal did not go badly for the Ottomans, other than that they were forced to share the Black Sea with the Russians on more or less equal terms. Crimea gained independence, under Tatar rule, and Georgia, Wallachia and Moldavia were returned to the Ottomans - this on proviso of religious freedom, no minor detail, for it was to sow the seeds of all the internal and international conflicts to come.
It all boiled over again within a few years. Catherine instated a puppet khan in the Crimea and when his subjects objected she sent in the troops to massacre them. This led to the annexation of the Crimea in 1783, with the further slaughter of 30,000 Turks. Catherine now claimed she was "Liberating Crimea," and in this light it was perceived by the West. She was hailed as the enlightened despot, Christian reason triumphing over Muslim fanatacism.
Meanwhile the Austrians made a surprise attack on Belgrade. It was repelled, but a Russian-Austrian alliance was now lined up for an assault on the Ottoman Empire.
After further incursions into their territory, the Turks declared war in 1787 and recalled Hassan the Algerian who had been busy quelling rebellions in Morea, Syria and Mamluk Egypt. He was given charge of the Black Sea naval force but was swiftly destroyed by the young military genius Suvarow - who then pushed on down the eastern shores unchecked.
The Austrians were driven back on the Western front, and in their panic fired upon each other in the darkness, losing thousands. Tens of thousands more perished from disease in the harsh environment. Emperor Joseph stepped down to make way for Loudon, a hero of the Seven Years War, and he promptly met with success in Bosnia and Serbia.
Abdul Hamid's death brougth his nephew Selim III to the throne. He made Hassan Grand Vezir, only to have him executed a short time later following a rout of Ottoman troops by Suvarow's Russians and their brutal bayonet charges.
Just when the Ottoman Empire was on its knees, with Loudon having taken Belgrade, Joseph died and was replaced by his brother Leopold, an opponent of Russia who duly withdrew from the alliance. The Austrians signed a generous treaty with Istanbul, basically restoring the pre-war status quo.
But Suvarow continued to hammer away at the Bulgarian frontier, and in one bloody, drawn-out battle, excessively costly to both sides, the Russians finally ground out a victory which was to leave the Ottomans at their mercy.
This set the alarm bells ringing among the European powers once again. Britain, in particular, was concerned at the implications of Russia gaining easy access to the Mediterranean and withal unrivalled naval supremacy (a threat which would, in fact, draw Britain into the Crimean War two generations later).
It was agreed all round that the Ottomans weighed heavily on the scales of Europe. Russia was persuaded to to sign a treaty which not only left her in charge of the Black Sea, but also right on the Ottomans' Balkan doorstep.
Such a treaty could not have endured while Catherine lived. Fortunately for the Turks, she died, suffering a stroke in 1796. On the other side of Europe, the French Revolution was in progress. The Revolution brought about a whole new chapter in Ottoman history, notably in terms of their relations with the European powers. From being allied with the French against mighty Russia and Britain, the Ottomans now found themselves allied with Russia and Britain against Napoleon.
When the French took Egypt off their Mamluk subjects, the Ottomans declared war. They were defeated on land but the French were destroyed at sea. An 1802 treaty placed Egypt back in Ottoman hands. So grateful were the Ottomans they restored relations with France.
Meanwhile the Janissaries had taken over in Serbia, committing such atrocities as to provoke the Sultan into sending his troops in - Ottoman Muslims to defend Serbian Christians from Ottoman Muslims. The upshot was Serbian independence, not including Belgrade.
The Serbians were not content, and under the leadership of a pig trader named Black George, turned on the Ottomans. Three times they repelled the sultan's forces. And then they captured Belgrade, a remarkable achievement. By the beginning of the 19th century, Serbia had become the first Christian nation to win its own independence from the Ottomans.
The Turks, suspicious of Russian involvement in Serbia, then aligned themselves with Napoleon. Things had come full circle, as they found themselves at odds with both the Russians and British again. Tsar Alexander sent his troops directly into Moldavia and Wallachia, leading to an Ottoman declaration of war.
The British sailed into the heart of Istanbul spouting threats of bombardment. The Ottomans stalled them long enough to organise their defenses, however, and the British had no choice but to retreat, being bombarded themselves along the way, with the loss of two ships in the Dardanelles.
Selim III's alleigance to Napoleon was paying dividends externally. But internally his admiration of French methods, and his attempts to adopt them, would lead to his downfall. In 1807 he was deposed after ordering a brutal response to a Janissary rebellion (against Europeanization) in the Hippodrome. His nephew Mustafa IV replaced him.
A truce with Russia that same year allowed Selim's supporters to consolidate and seek his restoration. Mustafa had him strangled before they could get to him. The coup d'etat went ahead regardless, and Selim's brother Mahmud II was instated in place of Mustafa. He in turn sought to follow through with Selim's Francophile policies, prompting another Janissary rebellion.
The Greeks originally endeavoured to gain independence with Russian support but were defeated. Later around 1819 they tried again while the Ottomans were busy suppressing an Albanian rebellion, and this time they were successful. They followed up with a general massacre of all Muslims then sunk an Ottoman flagship off Khios - the latter sparking a massacre of Khios Greeks by Ottomans. Britain, led by Lord Byron, attempted to consolidate Greek independence with a six figure sum designed to fight the Turks, but which the Greeks promptly squandered on civil war.
Hardly surprising therefore that in 1825 the Ottomans were able to reconquer much of Greece, taking the Acropolis itself in 1827. European powers then intervened, seeking autonomy for Greece. The Ottomans did not agree to the terms. They were annihilated in the ensuing naval engagement.
The Russians, now under Tsar Nicholas, moved on the Balkans, drawing the Turks into war. They took Varna but suffered heavy losses at the foot of the Balkans. They returned with a larger force and crossed the mountains, appearing suddenly at Adrianopolis, the Ottomans' European capital. These mountains had never been crossed by an invading force in Ottoman times, and so dazed were the locals they surrendered, not realising the invaders were in a state of exhaustion. A subsequent treaty left the Russians with parts of Moldavia and the Danube, plus Georgia and a chunk of the Caucasus in the east. It also liberated Serbia, though not Belgrade. And Greece officially got its independence - in 1830.
The loss of the bulk of their European and Caucasus territories prompted Mahmud II to instigate drastic reforms during the 1830s. First off he replaced the Janissaries with a modern army based on European methods. The Janissaries rebelled, inevitably, but unlike 1807 the Sultan was ready for them. They were gunned down and 4000 more burned barracaded in their barracks. A five centuries old military force, which had once been the terror of Europe, was wiped out in little more than half an hour.
This opened the way to politicial, educational and social reform such as the Ottoman Empire had not witnessed before. But now a new threat emerged in the form of Mehmet Ali, ruler of Egypt, who wanted Syria. Denied, he marched on the Ottomans and progressed all the way to central Anatolia. The Sultan called on the Russians for help, so desperate he allowed them to set up office in Istanbul. He then marched on Ali but was beaten on all fronts, largely due to bribe-induced desertions. A Russian-Austrian-English alliance delivered an ultimatum to Ali - settle for Egypt and Syria, or be blockaded. Ali rejected them. England bombarded Egypt. Ali accepted. By then Mahmud, the greatest reformer in Ottoman history, had died.
Onto developments leading up to the Crimean War: Following on from his father, Sultan Abdul Mejid continued with the reforms, introducing the Tanzimat which provided civil freedoms not dissimilar to those in the West. This, in turn, led to increased trade with the West, although the Ottomans' inexperience in handling finances allowed European enterprises to prosper at their expense and they found themselves more under Europe's political thumb than ever (causing the Sultan to withdraw into his harem).
Tsar Nicholas raised the Eastern Question, which was to say, the partition of the Ottoman Empire among the major European powers. His pretext was a demand for a protectorate over all Orthodox Christians under the Sultan's rule. This was rejected and further negotiations also failed. War broke out in 1853. The Turks were massacred in the first skirmish, at Sinope. France and England delivered the Tsar an ultimatum, which he ignored, so the two powers declared war on him in 1854, setting up office in Ottoman Bulgaria.
The Russians laid siege to Silistria, though this the Turks successfully defended themselves - their first victory over a European power in living memory. They then drove the Russians out of the lower Danube. The modernized Turk army had prevailed. Austria, not officially involved, occupied Moldovia and Wallachia and threatened to join the war against Russia. Although the Tsar retreated, this was not the end of the war. Rather, it was the beginning of the Crimean War proper.
This excessively costly war was probably unnecessary and was instigated entirely by France and England, seeking to follow up on the Ottoman successes (in which they themselves had been little more than cheerleaders). The defenders became the aggressors as they moved on the vital Black Sea port of Sebastapol. This time they brushed the Turks aside, regarding them as mere "bandits" in spite of their successes at Silistria and the lower Danube.
It was the first major war to make use of the train, the telegraph and a professional press. The presence of the latter created such enduring legends as The Charge of the Light Brigade and The Lady of the Lamp.
Though Russia took the city of Kars in the East, they were losing the war on the Crimea. Nicholas died and Alexander II arrived on the throne seeking peace. This came in 1856 with the Treaty of Paris, which freed the Danubian principalities and declared the Black Sea open to international commercial shipping but closed to all naval vessels. The Ottomans had suvived none the worse for wear. However, the real winners were the Western European powers.
Sultan Abdul Aziz arrived on the throne in 1861 but his anti-reform policies led to massive debt, famine and eventually insolvency. This resulted in the formation of the Young Turks, the first political party in Ottoman history, who sought a constitutional government synthesized with Islamic values. Among its leaders was Namik Kemal who became a political prisoner because of his nationalist writings.
It also led to revolt in the Balkans, aided and abetted by Russia. A massacre of Muslims in Bulgaria led to a massacre of Christian Bulgarians by the Ottoman army.
In 1876 there was a student uprising in Istanbul. Later that same year the Sultan was overthrown in a bloodless coup. His alcoholic brother Murad V replaced him but when news arrived that Abdul Aziz had slit his wrists he suffered a nervous breakdown and was removed. This brought his nephew Abdul Hamid II to the throne and he promptly signed a constitution.
Although the European powers sought a solution to the Balkan question, Britain held out, condemning the "Unspeakable Turk" and looking rather for a means of extending her own influence to the region.
Alexander pledged to defend Slavic Christians. Disreali accused Russia of warmongering and threatened to support the Turks against her. In 1877 Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire. Britain stayed out of it.
Russia moved down through the Balkans and Caucasus regions with little difficulty, gaining support from the local Christian populations along the way, and soon occupied parts of European Turkey and eastern Anatolia.
The tide turned with the introduction of Mehmet Ali to the Ottoman cause. Though outnumbered two to one, his men were equipped with US rifles that were superior to the Russian guns. They drove the invaders back across the Balkans - twice, finally routing them. In Britain the "Unspeakable Turk" was now being championed as that "brave fighter of the bulldog breed."
The tide turned again as winter set in. The Russians were better prepared and gained the upper hand, finally re-taking Plevna, then charging on to Sofia, as well as Armenia in the east. Eventually Alexander marched on Istanbul itself. This prompted Britain to belatedly send a few warships into the Marmara as a show of support for the Turks.
With the Russians at their gates the Ottomans agreed to a treaty that was excessively generous to Russian interests. Bulgaria, Montenegro and Serbia were transformed into enlarged independent nations, Romania also gained independence (but as a Latin nation was not enlarged), and Bosnia received a degree of autonomy.
The remaining European powers were understandably alarmed, discerning in this the emergence of a Slavic Eastern Bloc fully capable of threatening the West. They succeeded at the Treaty of Berlin in having the Bulgarian super state chopped in half, with Istanbul retaining control of the lower half.
The Bulgarians in the 1880s united and claimed independence anyway, upsetting both Russia and the Ottomans, although the Ottomans did not react. Abdul Hamid II was turning his back on Europe, and withal allowing Africa to slip away. France assumed a protectorate over Tunisia and with England moved in on bankrupt Egypt (England would later occupy Egypt by force). Abdul turned instead to the Islamic world, in which his empire remained the dominant force.
The Armenian independence movement provided him with a pretext for rekindling Islamic fanatacism. When the Armenian Christians became too animated for his liking, he sent in his troops to massacre them - in liaison with Kurdish tribesmen. By the time they were finished, scores of thousands of Armenians had been butchered in eastern Anatolia.
The following year an aborted attempt at a terrorist attack by Armenian activists led to further slaughter in the streets of Istanbul. Now the European powers delivered an ultimatum to the Sultan. He complied in so far as the killing stopped. But the ensuing inquiry was a sham. For all their bluster, the European powers took no action against the Ottomans.
Abdul Hamid was not enitrely finished with Europe. In 1897 Cretan unrest led to the 30 day war in which the Ottomans routed the Greeks. This, and similar turmoil in Macedonia, was the beginning of a division between the European powers that would ultimately lead to two world wars. Germany and Austria backed the Turks but France, Russia and England sided with Greece. The latter trio in fact forced the Sultan to give up Crete, which was, afterall, 90% Greek, though it had not known independence since the Romans had arrived 1900 years earlier.
The Young Turk revival and military unrest in Thrace at the beginning of the 20th century forced Abdul Hamid to yield and parliament was restored in 1908. The following year there was a coup by Islamic fundamentalists, and an accompanying massacre of Armenian Christians in the south, with the Sultan himself implicated. The military ousted the coup leaders and sent the Sultan into exile.
Thus was the arrival onto the political scene of Mustafa Kemal, the man the world would come to know as Ataturk. He served during this time as chief of staff under Commandant Shevket Pasha. Shevket ruled for two years as military dictator while sowing the seeds of a democratic empire
There were elections in 1912, with much talk of curruption, resulting in a landslide victory to Shevket's party - though he subsequently resigned as a result of the problems in Albania. The democratic empire's first test came with Italian claims on Tripoli. War broke out with the Italians victorious, notwithstanding some stout resistance by Arab tribesmen within Lybia itself.
At the same time, the Ottomans went to war with the Balkan league (1st Balkan War) and, divided, weakened and ill-prepared, they were defeated in a six week blitzkrieg. They lost Salonika after 500 years unbroken occupation. A 1913 treaty signing was disrupted by a coup (Shevket, back in charge, then removed again) in Istanbul and war resumed, with the Ottomans suffering the further loss of Adrianople and, in fact, most of their scant remaining European territory, leaving Istanbul itself as practically the north-western boundary of the empire.
However, civil war erupted among their conquerers, in which the enlarged Bulgaria was defeated by Greece and Serbia, allowing the Ottomans to sneak back and reclaim Adrianople. They managed to retain the city when the next treaty was signed. But Greece held on to Salonika (Ataturk's own home-town).
At the outbreak of WWI in 1914 Britain confiscated two Ottoman warships which were in its waters for repairs. This angered the Turks, who then gave shelter, in the Dardanelles, to two German warships being pursued by the British. Those ships, and the senior members of their crew, were integrated into the Ottoman navy, while the British naval force in the Porte was dismissed.
Churchill, Lord of the Admiralty, wanted to attack the Ottomans pronto but was overruled. Instead, without provokation, a German led Ottoman squadron bombarded Russian ports in the Black Sea. Russia, England and France declared war on the Ottomans. The Turks fared badly, with a disastrous winter campaign in the Caucasus and a failed attempt to retake Egypt. The Churchill plan was revisited, only Kitchener insisted on a land invasion rather than by sea. Finding themselves up against the formidable Mustafa Kemal, ironically one of the few high profile Turks to have opposed allegiance with Germany, the allies were twice driven back into the Aegean and finally forced to withdraw from a battle which had been ill-conceived and excessively costly in terms of lives to both sides.
The Russians had been making inroads in the Black Sea, but this was checked by the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. Although the Ottomans survived there, they lost Iraq to the British and suffered an Arab uprising and mass desertions within their own ranks. Mustafa Kemal held out in Palestine and, in fact, finished the war as the only undefeated Ottoman leader.
When the victorious allies partitioned the empire, leaving the Turks with a mere chunk of Anatolia, it was Kemal who rallied his compatriots.
Firstly they overthrew and exiled the last Sultan, Mehmed VI, then they drove the occupying Greeks back out into the Aegean Sea. A new international peace conference recognized the Turkish boundaries we know today, and in 1923 Ataturk founded the Turkish Republic, moving its capital to Ankara.
This occurred under the military leadership of Enver Pasha, one of the three Young Turk leaders who came to power with the 1913 coup. During the war Armenian Turks sided with the Russians and committed a massacre at Van. In response around one million Armenians were deported by force with approximately half perishing in the process. After the war the Young Turk leaders were sent into exile, all to die violent deaths.
Ataturk became first president of the Turkish Republic, introducing astonishing reforms aimed at secularization, Europeanization and, ultimately, modernization. This included universal suffrage, prohibition of more conservative forms of Muslim dress, and the conversion of the alphabet from Arabic to Latin.
End
Just as it is a cultural crossroads today, so it was thousands of years ago. Archaelogical evidence indicates it was settled during the Neolithic period from three different directions - Hatti from the north (Caucasia), Hittites from the east (Iraq), and Ionians from the west (Greece). Ilus II of the Greek Dardanian dynasty is credited with the founding of Troy as a trading post .
The Hittites established Turkey's first major empire almost 4,000 years ago and achieved a notable military victory over Egypt at Kadesh in the time of Ramesses II (leading to what is regarded as the first truce in world history). The Persians invaded in the 6th and 5th centuries BC, before the arrival of Alexander the Greek in the 4th century BC.
Turkey remained for the most part in Greek hands until the coming of the Romans. It continued to weather invasions from all sides, just as it had throughout the Hittite and Persian periods, and it was the Celtic Gauls of Western Europe who first made Ankara (Angora) their capital.
Istanbul was founded by Greek explorers in the 7th century BC and named in honour of their king, Byzas. Byzantium, the city, fell to the Romans in the 2nd century AD, and in 324 the emperor Constantine made it eastern capital of the newly divided Roman Empire.
It thus became the home of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. During the reign of Justinian I in the mid-6th century the Byzantine Empire encompassed the Mediterranean, with colonies in the Middle East, North Africa, Spain, Italy, Greece, the Balkans, the Ukraine and Anatolia.
Arch-enemies included the Bulgars, whose 9th century khan Krum killed Emperor Nikephoros in the Battle of Pliska and turned his skull into a drinking cup. Emperor Basil II earned the nickname 'Bulgar-Slayer' two centuries later, after capturing 15,000 Bulgars at the Battle of Kleidon, blinding all but 150 of them, and sending them back to their ruler, who died of a stroke.
The first Turks began to arrive in the 9th century, having wandered across Asia from their homelands along the Chinese and Mongolian frontiers. Turks, in fact, were prominent in the Mongolian armies of Ghengis Khan.
Among the first Turkic tribes were the Seljuks, who had previously ruled parts of Central Asia and Persia, including the fabled capital Samarkand, and converted to Islam. In 1071, under Alp Aslan, they inflicted a stunning defeat on the Byzantines at Manzikert in eastern Anatolia.
Byzantium earned a reprieve when the Seljuks were devastated in turn by the Mongols. The Mongols did not remain, allowing various other Turkic tribes to fill the void. These included the Osmanli (Ottomans), who would later become the most powerful empire on earth.
The Ottomans were very patient and spent half a millenia pushing across Anatolia and on into Europe. They drew others into their empire so that by the time they had reached the Balkans they were already a hybrid race, as much Greek, Bulgar, Russian and Persian as Turkic.
Osman is credited with founding the empire, while his son Orkhan first brought them into Europe, crossing the Dardenelles into Thrace and the Bosphorus to surround Constantinople. In this the Turks found themselves allied to the Catalan Empire, then at its height with a colony at Gallipoli, which sought to avenge the murder of its military hero Roger de Flor at the hands of Byzantine Emperor Michael Palaeologus .
Orkhan's successor Murad was the first of the great Ottoman emperors. He expanded into both Asia and Europe at the same time. His army suffered an early setback against the Serbs and Bosnians in the Battle of Kosovo, but eventually regrouped to destroy the Slavs. A turning point in the battle was the inexplicable withdrawal of Serbian troops by their chief's son-in-law Vuk Brankovic.
Murad did not live to celebrate the victory. Fighting with his men, though 70, he was assassinated by another of the Serb leader's sons-in-law Milosh Obilic. This one had been accused of conspiracy and was so desperate to prove his loyalty he deliberately got captured by the Turks, drew upon his status to demand an audience with Murad, then flew forth and stabbed him twice. Murad lived long enough, however, to know victory was assured.
In accordance with his wishes, the Ottomans treated their victims with lenience and tolerance, and so a Pax Ottomanica prevailed for some centuries. It was a time of great progression throughout the empire.
Sultan Bayezid repelled the last of the Crusades, which was instigated by the Hungarians as the Ottomans reached their border after conquering Serbia in the late 14th century. (The first Crusades, in fact, were not against Islam but against Eastern Orthodox Christians, including the capture of Constantinople in 1204, and later extending into the Balkans, all at the whim of the Pope in Rome and financed by Italian banks, principally in Genoa).
The Crusaders, with their French chevaliers in the vanguard, stormed through Serbia and Bulgaria virtually unopposed, then laid seige to Nicopolis, Bulgaria - scene of many an ancient Greek battle. It had been so easy they grew complacent, forgot about the Ottomans and began to party and squabble among themselves.
Bayezid, preoccupied with his seige of the last remnants of Byzantium at Constantinople, had been slow to react. But now, the emperor known as "Thunderbolt" lived up to his name and appeared suddenly at Nicopolis with an army of 200,000.
The French chevaliers gallantly rode forth to meet him, managed a few initial victories (Bayezid's tactic was to put his less adept and more dispensable troops out front), and found themselves in the midst of the giant Ottoman army, which duly annihilated them. The Hungarians, who had disagreed with the French on tactics, fled the scene. The last Crusade was over.
Bayezid returned to his seige of Constantinople (he first called it Istanbul which, despite sounding Asiatic, is actually a corruption of the Greek name for the city), but, just as victory was within grasp, he was distracted again - and this time fatally.
In the spirit of his ancestor Ghengis the Mongol, Timur the Tatar had come sweeping unopposed across Asia, forming an empire that extended from China to Hungary in the north and India to Palestine in the south. Its capital was at Samarkand (situated in what is today Uzbekistan).
Timur, a cripple, actually had no designs on the Ottoman Empire, which he respected, and whose religion his own people shared. Bayezid, who had known nothing but victory, was conversely arrogant, and invaded a city allied to the Tatars. Timur attempted to negotiate but the sultan rebuffed him.
Timur therefore recaptured the city by force. Bayezid marched his army across Anatolia to meet him. While he was doing so, the Tatars craftily circled around behind, completely evading the Ottoman scouts. Bayezid then made one final blunder. Contrary to his usual tactic of luring the enemy with a soft front, he sent his prized Anatolian cavalry. They were not only his finest, they were of Tatar stock, and they promptly defected to the other side.
The subsequent rout of the mighty Ottomans, which included the capture, humiliation and eventual death of Bayezid, could have spelt the end of the Ottomans in Turkey, just as the Mongol rampage two centuries earlier had driven their Seljuk forerunners out for good. But Timur himself died shortly after and the Tatars, never much interested in Anatolia in the first place, departed.
So it was that Bayezid's son Mehmed, followed in turn by his son, the great Fatih Mehmed, swiftly re-established the Ottoman empire throughout its former territories. It went on to conquer many more, as far afield as Morocco, Hungary and Persia, and including, finally, Constantinople.
The Ottomans enlisted the aid of a Hungarian, Urban, to build monstrous cannons for them, which could not only bust down the Roman walls, but also protect the Bosphorus. In 1453 they finally took Constantinople.
Meanwhile the Mamluks (ex-Circassian Turkic slaves turned conquerors) had taken Egypt. Theirs became the first army to repel the Mongols. But they fell to the Ottomans in the time of Selim the Grim.
Selim's successor Suleyman (Solomon Turkified) the Magnificent was among the greatest of the sultans. Ascending to the throne in the early 16th century through the then common practice of fratricide, he was grandson of the great Fatih Mehmed. Suleyman was the first to capture Belgrade and the Christian stronghold of Rhodes.
Amazingly, they never defeated the Knights of St Johns, the tiny group of elite soldiers who had held out on Rhodes for centuries with vague hopes of some day reclaiming Jerusalem for Christianity. In fact, the knights were a considerable nuisance to Ottoman shipping. So the mighty Ottoman army moved in for the kill. They were not successful, repeatedly frustrated by an impenetrable defence. Finally the knights agreed to negotiate (though they would later encounter the Ottomans again, on their new homeland Malta).
The Ottomans suffered similar embarrassments elsewhere, in Egypt, Persia, the Balkans and Italy, but invariably, in the end, their perserverence paid off. Less obstinate were the Hungarians, who they crushed on various occasions, taking advantage of divisions within the isolated kingdom (and avenging the defeat of Mehmed II, who had suffered a rare reversal at Belgrade in 1456) only to retreat back through the mountains to fight another enemy at home or else in Asia.
It was in 1529 that they arrived at the gates of Vienna, with a force outnumbering their opponents three to one. Suleyman's troops had travelled through the Balkans during a particularly harsh winter and were not in great shape. They encountered fierce resistance from the Europeans, with Poles to the fore, and were eventually forced to retreat. It was Suleyman's first decisive defeat, although the Ottomans did return for another, half-hearted attempt which never quite reached Vienna itself.
Europe still feared the giant Ottoman army and it was the Bohemian king and Hungarian pretender Ferdinand who first proposed a truce, even agreeing to pay a pension to the sultan. Suleyman refused and vowed to pursue Charles V. Though he would come to accept that Vienna - 700 miles away across the Balkans - was beyond the reach of a sultan in Istanbul.
Suleyman's final years were spent battling the Portuguese off Mesopotamia - with limited success. On Malta, the French-led knights held out heroically until the Spanish arrived to chase the Ottomans away and inflict upon Suleyman his greatest humilition. He returned to his favorite hunting ground, Hungary, where his forces consolidated their territory - and where he died in 1572, in the midst of his 13th campaign (3rd against Hungary).
Meanwhile Barbarossa, a chieftain from the Barbary Coast of North Africa, had allied himself to Suleyman. After a combined Christian force defeated him at Tunis in 1535, he retaliated by leading a combined Ottoman-Berber force (Berber's are indigineous to North-West Africa and comprised the vast majority of the Moors who, under Arab leadership, settled in Spain) into thes Balaeric Islands.
Barbarossa's Ottoman-Berbers, antagonised by attacks on their own vessels in the Mediterranean, next attacked Italy, principally Sardinia and Venice, but could not occupy it. The Christians, under the Pope and Charles V, then put a huge fleet to sea, easily outnumbering the enemy. But when the battle began they inexplicably fled from Barbarossa, undone by internal bickering.
The Mediterranean remained an Ottoman lake for a generation. Barbarossa went on to defeat Charles' forces again at Algiers (with help of a hurricane) then in 1543 arrived in the heart of Western Europe by landing at Marseille, with the approval of Frances I, Charles' arch enemy. They proceeded to turn Toulon into Constantinople II, practicing their own religion there and even trading in Christian slaves! They then invaded, sacked and burnt Nice. Eventually Frances was obliged to bribe them back to Istanbul. Barbarossa died two years later.
Suleyman's successor, Selim the Sot, preferred to get drunk in his harem while his grand vizier took care of business. But he overruled his plans to recapture Tunis from the Spanish and instead ordered an invasion of Venitian Cyprus. This was achieved at far greater cost to themselves than the enemy, and in fact only after agreeing to a truce then betraying it by killing the enemy leader during negotiations.
The Spanish-Italian victory over the Ottomans in the sea battle of Lepanto, 1571, was a tremendously costly battle for both sides, but the eventual victory of Don John's Christians over the Turks of Ali Pasha (who died in the battle) was a turning point in history. Cervantes, himself wounded in the battle, described it as the "End of Turkish invicincibility." All of Christian Europe celebrated, including the French, who were more or less allied to the Turks, and the distant backwater of England.
The Ottoman Empire was stunned and dismayed. Even Selim, the short fat Sultan of dubious parentage whose reign began the empire's decline, paused from his debauchery for a few days to fast and give prayer. He then ordered a massacre of all Spaniards and Venetians in his dominion, though fortunately the Grand Vizier dissuaded him.
Not quite the end of the Ottomans. They defeated the Portuguese at Morocco, killing their king Sebastain in battle. Selim also died at this time, not in warfare, but by slipping over in a drunken stupor and cracking his head on the marble bathroom floor. A not inappropriate end to the least distinguished of all sultans.
His eldest son Murad III took over, after having his many brothers executed, scared the Christians off Cyprus and took Georgia and Daghestan, but failed to hold onto Persia.
Onto the 16th and early 17th centuries; we find Murad IV, having indirectly succeeded his older brother, Osman, butchering 25,000 of his own people in a brutal reign of terror. He certainly avenged himself on his subjects, who had imprisoned then killed Osman in the first instance of regicide in Ottoman history.
So bloodthirsty became Murad he ordered summary executions for the slightest disturbance; such as the drowning of a group of young women whose song and laughter reached his ears and irritated them. But iron-fisted Murad did succeed in restoring law and order throughout his empire, lacking during the reigns of his brother and insane uncle.
A large powerful figure in the image of Porus (the Indian giant who had heroically battled Alexander from the back of his elephant, then later become the Greek's ally), Murad fought alongside his troops in the reclamation of Baghdad. He was the first sultan since Sulyman to serve in battle, and was said to have taken on the largest of the Persians in single combat before the battle and slain him with his first blow. After the victory, he massacred all prisoners and civilians.
Murad died just 28 years old. His end was hastened by excesses of alcohol, though he had enforced prohibition on his subjects! The empire then fell into decline. His final wish was to have his only surviving brother Ibrahim executed, but it was not then carried out, the worse for the empire.
Ibrahim was ruled by his harem, with whom he became obsessed. His avarice for jewellery and fur enitrely corrupted him. He executed his Grand Vezier (the first sultan ever to do so), a hero of the Baghdad campaign, for displeasing a lady of his harem on some trivial matter. Meanwhile his troops were away fighting interminable wars with the Russians on the Crimea and the Italians on Crete.
Inevitably Ibrahim, who had refused to heed earlier warnings, became the empire's second victim of regicide, in 1648, dying imprisoned just as his eldest brother had done. With his death the absolute despotism of the sultans came to an end, and the empire began to recover.
It was never to recapture its former glory, however, as signified by an early 17th century treaty with the Habsburg's. For the first time the Ottoman's were forced to negotiate as equals, and actually came off slightly the worse with the loss of some of their Hungarian terrain.
No longer a threat to Western Europe, which was too wartorn itself to take advantage of the Ottoman demise, it became a key player in the continent's politics and commerce, even signing an (anti-Spanish) alliance and free-trade pact with Elizabeth I in far-off Britain. A century after the discovery of America had wrenched Europe out of the Middle Ages, the Ottomans began to follow.
Interesting to examine the repercussions of Ibrahim's execution. Evidently this shook the sultanate to its core. No more the totalitarian sultan. Ibrahim's son Mehmet IV ascended to the throne at the age of 14 and created the Köprülü - Grand Vezir with greatly enhanced powers which basically became the head of government.
The first Köprülü, also named Mehmet, executed 35,000 in a reign of terror reminiscent of Sultan Murad. Sultan Mehmed was no warrior. He preferred to hunt while the Köprülü led military campaigns. Mehmed the Köprülü recaptured several islands from the Venetians.
The second Köprülü was Ahmet, and his military achievements would rival those of the greatest sultans, Fatih Mehmet and Suleyman the Magnificent. He took Belgrade with the help of neighbouring Christian regions who welcomed the Ottomans as liberators from Habsburg tyranny. In this manner they continued, surging on through Transylvania and Hungary and right into Austria itself. But in 1664 they were defeated while trying to cross the Raab enroute to Vienna.
Leading the Austrian defence were the French. The Ottomans took one look at their clean-shaven faces and powdered wigs and jokingly asked "Who are these young girls?" But the French dandies, battle-hardened veterans of the Thirty Years War, cut them down and inflicted upon the Ottomans their first major defeat ever in Central Europe (although the Treaty was, as usual, favorable to the Ottomans, and they lost little).
Ahmet then led the recapture of Crete from a Venitian-French alliance, finally ending a seige which had endured quarter of a century - longer than Troy - and turning the Eastern Mediterranean into an Ottoman lake. They were welcomed by the Greek inhabitants as liberators from the Pope.
Next on the agenda was the Crimea, now in Polish hands. The Cossack (originally Kazakh) inhabitants of Ukraine sought Ottoman protection from Polish and Russian tyranny. Ahmet attempted to negotiate with the Polish King and the Russian Tsar, but when this failed he marched north to do battle.
Joined by Tatars and the Cossacks themselves, the Ottomans had surprisingly little difficulty in seeing off the Poles and Russians, and recaptured most of what is the modern Ukraine in 1676. The empire was in the best shape, territorially, that it had been since the time of Suleyman more than a century before.
Following the death of the great Köprülü, Sultan Mehmed IV broke with precedent and exercised his prerogative of appointing the Grand Vezier himself.
Thus came to power Black Mustafa, his son-in-law, an entirely corrupted individual with a harem numbering a mind-boggling 1500. Mustafa harbored grandiose ambitions of outdoing the great Suleyman and taking Vienna and Rome.
But, in reality, he was a poor soldier and promptly squandered a lot of the terrain won by his Köprülü predecessors. This included the Ukraine, taken just five years earlier. The Ottomans were driven out by the Russians with vast losses of men.
This did not greatly concern Mustafa, who already had his eye on Vienna. At the bequest of the Hungarian Protestants, he marched his army north to wage war against the Habsburgs in 1683. It was to be the last Muslim onslaught on Christian Europe.
Mustafa first ignored the advice of the Khan of Tatar and the Pash of Buda and strode directly on to Vienna before consolidating the territories in between. But he hesitated before attacking the city, knowing that if Vienna were taken in battle the booty would go to his army, but if the enemy could be forced to surrender the booty would go to he, Mustafa, the sultan's man in Austria. Whilst he hesitated thus, the Germans arrived to support the Austrians and the Poles were on their way.
Guns were used in this battle. The Ottomans' were inferior, nullifying the advantage of their superior numbers. So they resorted to mining, a tactic highly successful in Ottoman history.
The situation was becoming critical for the defense when the Poles arrived, and here Mustafa messed up disastrously. He just pretended they were not there; carried on with the job at hand while the new arrivals crossed the Danube unopposed and set themselves up for a downhill assault.
The outcome was a rout. The Tatars fled, the Hungarians followed, and most of the Ottomans went with them. The Janissaries stayed and fought to the death, of course, but the rest of the Ottoman army hightailed it. 10,000 were left dead on the field. The Turks also neglected to take their sacks of coffee, and this resulted in the establishment of the first Viennese coffee shop. (The croissant also originated in Vienna, shaped thus to celebrate victory over the Turks).
The Poles pursued them down through Hungary, and no fewer than 7,000 Ottomans perished when a bridge of boats crossing the Danube collapsed beneath them. This led directly to the surrender of Gran, an Ottoman possession since the time of Suleyman.
Mustafa executed the Pash as a scapegoat. Sultan Mehmed executed Mustafa.
In wider terms, the devastating defeat, the worst ever suffered by the Ottomans in central Europe, ended their prestige as an invading force and indeed they were never to return.
The Ottomans, under Suleyman II (his brother Mehmed was forced into exile following the aforementioned disasters) and the 3rd Köprülü, Mustafa Zade, did regain Belgrade and all of Serbia while the Habsurgs were preoccupied with the William of Orange saga.
But in 1691 they suffered another devastating loss at the hands of Ludwig's Austrians and their superior musketry, Mustafa himself being shot through the head whilst leading a charge. Meanwhile Peter the Great was beginning to challenge Ottoman naval domination of the Black Sea.
Suleyman II soon died, was followed by his brother Ahmed II, who also soon died, and thus came to power young Mustafa, son of Mehmed IV. Mustafa II made a promising start by securing the area around Belgrade. But just one year later the Ottomans were again smashed by the Austrians, losing 30,000 men (10,000 drowned) at the Battle of Zenta where the Grand Vezir was killed and the Janissaries mutineed.
Fortunately for the Ottomans, the Europeans were still preoccupied with their own conflicts, with the War of the Spanish Succession now underway, and again failed to follow through when they had the Turks at their mercy. In fact, the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699 merely enforced the status quo with regards to territory, and the Ottomans retained most of the Balkans and scraps of Hungary and the Ukraine.
The Europeans had also come to realise that, after three centuries, the Ottoman threat had finally come to an end. They had fallen well off the pace in every department, politically, socially, economically, militarily. The Ottomans, for their part, knew this and accepted it. They might have slept soundly too, but for one man:
Peter the Great still lurked in the background, disgrunted with the Treaty in which he had been a minor player, eying the Black Sea with a path to the Mediterranean. Looking to establish himself as the Caesar of Constantinople - emperor of the 3rd Roman Empire, he set his sights on the capture of Istanbul.
Russia, at the dawn of the 18th century, was emerging as a modern industrialized imperial nation. Europe, entirely, had turned the tables on the Ottomans. No more the city states and feudal system the Turks had so easily overcome, but now the industrialized, battle-hardened nations with their big ships and mobile field artillery.
The Balkans appealed to Peter for help against, not the Turks, but the Austrian Catholics. They did not fear the Ottomans, who permitted them a fair degree of liberty, religious and otherwise.
The Russians, not quite ready to help out the Balkans, were nonetheless encroaching upon the Black Sea, which the Ottomans wished to retain as a lake. Meanwhile, a revolt at Adrianople led to the abdication of Mustafa II.
Mustafa's departure paved the way for the arrival of his brother, Ahemed III, who ruled very capably for a generation.
In 1711 Russia entered the Ottoman territory of Moldavia in persuit of Swedes following their triumph over the Scandinavian kingdom. The Turks responded swiftly, so swiftly that they caught the enemy unaware and had Peter the Great himself surrounded before he knew it. The Tsar actually went to pieces, suffering epileptic seizures as he contemplated certain defeat, the loss of all his territories and perhaps even his own enslavement.
The Ottomans, preoccupied with a Safavid invasion, were less interested in killing off the Russians, and were happy to sign a treaty which kept them out of the Black Sea. Thus peace was established for the next quarter of a century.
The Ottomans were, however, eyeing their former possessions in Greece, now under Venitian occupation. The Italian city state was in decline, ripe for the taking. Indeed, the Turks were barely troubled in recapturing their islands, plus Corinth, Morea and Crete (1714).
But in doing so they violated their treaty with the Habsburgs and the Austrians were drawn into the conflict. The Ottomans won the first round, at Karlowitz, before the tables were turned at Peterwardein, where the Grand Vezir was slain.
The Austrians then proceeded to kick the last of the Ottomans out of Hungary and recapture Belgrade. The latter was achieved against the odds, through the brilliant tactics of the French-born prince Eugen, who had tasted victory over the Ottomans before.
The subsequent treaty, in 1718, saw the Ottomans' European possessions reduced to little more than Bulgaria and much of Greece. But the real losers were the Venitians, who were not given back any of their territories. It was their death-knell as a European power.
Despite a string of shattering losses to the Austrians, the Ottomans made a remarkable comeback in the 1730s, overcoming technological military deficiencies, largely through the advice and influence of their French allies.
The Ottomans had found themselves threatened on two fronts. Their 25 year treaty having expired, the Russians were pushing their troops down toward the Black Sea. Meanwhile, the Austrians were taking back the last vestiges of Ottoman territory in the Balkans.
A Russian-Habsburg alliance offered the Ottomans an ultimatum. Hand over the Black Sea to the former and the Balkans to the latter. This, however, threatened French commercial interests in the Mediterranean, as the Russians were also demanding free passage through the Marmara.
It was the French who encouraged the Ottomans to march against the Austrians, and this they did, led by the Frenchman Comte de Bonneval. Here they managed a series of surprising victories, and eventually recaptured all their Balkan territories, including the big prize, Belgrade.
The Russian onslought, in contrast, was checked only by extreme hot weather and disease. On the western front, they were creeping toward Turkey through Poland and Moldavia - even as the Austrians were surrendering.
The two armies came face to face at the Danube. The Ottomans were 200,000 and flush from victory. The Russians wisely offered to compromise, and it was the French, who had brokered a favorable deal for the Ottomans with the Austrians, who did the same again at the Treaty of Belgrade.
The Ottomans kept their Black Sea lake and were also given back the Crimea and Moldavia. The Russians merely gained a new chunk of the Ukraine.
The Ottoman Empire had been saved from the point of complete annihilation, with powerful enemies approaching from two fronts, and regained much of the territory (and face) lost in those devastating defeats to Prince Eugen's Austrians earlier in the 18th century.
Following the partition of Poland between Prussia and Russia in the 1760s Catherine the Great sent her troops into Ottoman territory in pursuit of fleeing Poles. There they massacred not only Poles but Turks. Sultan Mustafa III declared war, though his army was run down and well off the pace. The Crimean Tatars achieved some early victories over the Russians, but the Ottomans took a licking between the Dniester and Danube.
Catherine's dream was to "liberate" Greece from the Ottomans. She attempted this with the help of the British, fighting against the French-backed Turks. They landed in Greece in 1770 and butchered the local Turks. The Ottomans sent the troops in and drove the Russians straight back out.
The Russians had more success on water, destroying the Ottoman fleet in the Mediterranean, partly through the assistance of an unsuspected fire-ship under British pilot. But, instead of following through, they hesitated at the mouth of the Dardanelles, giving the Turks time to fortify. The Russians eventually laid siege to the fortress and were closing on victory when Hassan of Algiers led the Corsairs out from Istanbul and surprised them in the trenches.
The Russians continued to make progress in the Balkans and Black Sea regions, however, taking Moldavia, Wallachia and basically everything else north of the Danube, plus another chunk of the Ukraine in which fierce battles reduced the Tatar population by two thirds.
They then proceeded to overrun the Crimea itself, without resistance, and also captured Georgia, thereby claiming the northern half of the Black Sea coast.
Alarmed European powers stepped in to broker a peace deal, but negotiations broke down when Mustafa refused to cede the Muslim stronghold of Crimea. Instead, in 1773, he brought Muhinzada Pasha, hero of Morea, back into the frame and campaigned successfully against the Russians in Bulgaria.
In 1774 the Russians crushed the Ottoman army in the Balkans, leaving the sultan (Abdul Hamid, in fact - Mustafa III had died in action the previous year) no option but to sign a treaty along the same lines as the one rejected two years earlier, losing the Crimea.
On the surface the deal did not go badly for the Ottomans, other than that they were forced to share the Black Sea with the Russians on more or less equal terms. Crimea gained independence, under Tatar rule, and Georgia, Wallachia and Moldavia were returned to the Ottomans - this on proviso of religious freedom, no minor detail, for it was to sow the seeds of all the internal and international conflicts to come.
It all boiled over again within a few years. Catherine instated a puppet khan in the Crimea and when his subjects objected she sent in the troops to massacre them. This led to the annexation of the Crimea in 1783, with the further slaughter of 30,000 Turks. Catherine now claimed she was "Liberating Crimea," and in this light it was perceived by the West. She was hailed as the enlightened despot, Christian reason triumphing over Muslim fanatacism.
Meanwhile the Austrians made a surprise attack on Belgrade. It was repelled, but a Russian-Austrian alliance was now lined up for an assault on the Ottoman Empire.
After further incursions into their territory, the Turks declared war in 1787 and recalled Hassan the Algerian who had been busy quelling rebellions in Morea, Syria and Mamluk Egypt. He was given charge of the Black Sea naval force but was swiftly destroyed by the young military genius Suvarow - who then pushed on down the eastern shores unchecked.
The Austrians were driven back on the Western front, and in their panic fired upon each other in the darkness, losing thousands. Tens of thousands more perished from disease in the harsh environment. Emperor Joseph stepped down to make way for Loudon, a hero of the Seven Years War, and he promptly met with success in Bosnia and Serbia.
Abdul Hamid's death brougth his nephew Selim III to the throne. He made Hassan Grand Vezir, only to have him executed a short time later following a rout of Ottoman troops by Suvarow's Russians and their brutal bayonet charges.
Just when the Ottoman Empire was on its knees, with Loudon having taken Belgrade, Joseph died and was replaced by his brother Leopold, an opponent of Russia who duly withdrew from the alliance. The Austrians signed a generous treaty with Istanbul, basically restoring the pre-war status quo.
But Suvarow continued to hammer away at the Bulgarian frontier, and in one bloody, drawn-out battle, excessively costly to both sides, the Russians finally ground out a victory which was to leave the Ottomans at their mercy.
This set the alarm bells ringing among the European powers once again. Britain, in particular, was concerned at the implications of Russia gaining easy access to the Mediterranean and withal unrivalled naval supremacy (a threat which would, in fact, draw Britain into the Crimean War two generations later).
It was agreed all round that the Ottomans weighed heavily on the scales of Europe. Russia was persuaded to to sign a treaty which not only left her in charge of the Black Sea, but also right on the Ottomans' Balkan doorstep.
Such a treaty could not have endured while Catherine lived. Fortunately for the Turks, she died, suffering a stroke in 1796. On the other side of Europe, the French Revolution was in progress. The Revolution brought about a whole new chapter in Ottoman history, notably in terms of their relations with the European powers. From being allied with the French against mighty Russia and Britain, the Ottomans now found themselves allied with Russia and Britain against Napoleon.
When the French took Egypt off their Mamluk subjects, the Ottomans declared war. They were defeated on land but the French were destroyed at sea. An 1802 treaty placed Egypt back in Ottoman hands. So grateful were the Ottomans they restored relations with France.
Meanwhile the Janissaries had taken over in Serbia, committing such atrocities as to provoke the Sultan into sending his troops in - Ottoman Muslims to defend Serbian Christians from Ottoman Muslims. The upshot was Serbian independence, not including Belgrade.
The Serbians were not content, and under the leadership of a pig trader named Black George, turned on the Ottomans. Three times they repelled the sultan's forces. And then they captured Belgrade, a remarkable achievement. By the beginning of the 19th century, Serbia had become the first Christian nation to win its own independence from the Ottomans.
The Turks, suspicious of Russian involvement in Serbia, then aligned themselves with Napoleon. Things had come full circle, as they found themselves at odds with both the Russians and British again. Tsar Alexander sent his troops directly into Moldavia and Wallachia, leading to an Ottoman declaration of war.
The British sailed into the heart of Istanbul spouting threats of bombardment. The Ottomans stalled them long enough to organise their defenses, however, and the British had no choice but to retreat, being bombarded themselves along the way, with the loss of two ships in the Dardanelles.
Selim III's alleigance to Napoleon was paying dividends externally. But internally his admiration of French methods, and his attempts to adopt them, would lead to his downfall. In 1807 he was deposed after ordering a brutal response to a Janissary rebellion (against Europeanization) in the Hippodrome. His nephew Mustafa IV replaced him.
A truce with Russia that same year allowed Selim's supporters to consolidate and seek his restoration. Mustafa had him strangled before they could get to him. The coup d'etat went ahead regardless, and Selim's brother Mahmud II was instated in place of Mustafa. He in turn sought to follow through with Selim's Francophile policies, prompting another Janissary rebellion.
The Greeks originally endeavoured to gain independence with Russian support but were defeated. Later around 1819 they tried again while the Ottomans were busy suppressing an Albanian rebellion, and this time they were successful. They followed up with a general massacre of all Muslims then sunk an Ottoman flagship off Khios - the latter sparking a massacre of Khios Greeks by Ottomans. Britain, led by Lord Byron, attempted to consolidate Greek independence with a six figure sum designed to fight the Turks, but which the Greeks promptly squandered on civil war.
Hardly surprising therefore that in 1825 the Ottomans were able to reconquer much of Greece, taking the Acropolis itself in 1827. European powers then intervened, seeking autonomy for Greece. The Ottomans did not agree to the terms. They were annihilated in the ensuing naval engagement.
The Russians, now under Tsar Nicholas, moved on the Balkans, drawing the Turks into war. They took Varna but suffered heavy losses at the foot of the Balkans. They returned with a larger force and crossed the mountains, appearing suddenly at Adrianopolis, the Ottomans' European capital. These mountains had never been crossed by an invading force in Ottoman times, and so dazed were the locals they surrendered, not realising the invaders were in a state of exhaustion. A subsequent treaty left the Russians with parts of Moldavia and the Danube, plus Georgia and a chunk of the Caucasus in the east. It also liberated Serbia, though not Belgrade. And Greece officially got its independence - in 1830.
The loss of the bulk of their European and Caucasus territories prompted Mahmud II to instigate drastic reforms during the 1830s. First off he replaced the Janissaries with a modern army based on European methods. The Janissaries rebelled, inevitably, but unlike 1807 the Sultan was ready for them. They were gunned down and 4000 more burned barracaded in their barracks. A five centuries old military force, which had once been the terror of Europe, was wiped out in little more than half an hour.
This opened the way to politicial, educational and social reform such as the Ottoman Empire had not witnessed before. But now a new threat emerged in the form of Mehmet Ali, ruler of Egypt, who wanted Syria. Denied, he marched on the Ottomans and progressed all the way to central Anatolia. The Sultan called on the Russians for help, so desperate he allowed them to set up office in Istanbul. He then marched on Ali but was beaten on all fronts, largely due to bribe-induced desertions. A Russian-Austrian-English alliance delivered an ultimatum to Ali - settle for Egypt and Syria, or be blockaded. Ali rejected them. England bombarded Egypt. Ali accepted. By then Mahmud, the greatest reformer in Ottoman history, had died.
Onto developments leading up to the Crimean War: Following on from his father, Sultan Abdul Mejid continued with the reforms, introducing the Tanzimat which provided civil freedoms not dissimilar to those in the West. This, in turn, led to increased trade with the West, although the Ottomans' inexperience in handling finances allowed European enterprises to prosper at their expense and they found themselves more under Europe's political thumb than ever (causing the Sultan to withdraw into his harem).
Tsar Nicholas raised the Eastern Question, which was to say, the partition of the Ottoman Empire among the major European powers. His pretext was a demand for a protectorate over all Orthodox Christians under the Sultan's rule. This was rejected and further negotiations also failed. War broke out in 1853. The Turks were massacred in the first skirmish, at Sinope. France and England delivered the Tsar an ultimatum, which he ignored, so the two powers declared war on him in 1854, setting up office in Ottoman Bulgaria.
The Russians laid siege to Silistria, though this the Turks successfully defended themselves - their first victory over a European power in living memory. They then drove the Russians out of the lower Danube. The modernized Turk army had prevailed. Austria, not officially involved, occupied Moldovia and Wallachia and threatened to join the war against Russia. Although the Tsar retreated, this was not the end of the war. Rather, it was the beginning of the Crimean War proper.
This excessively costly war was probably unnecessary and was instigated entirely by France and England, seeking to follow up on the Ottoman successes (in which they themselves had been little more than cheerleaders). The defenders became the aggressors as they moved on the vital Black Sea port of Sebastapol. This time they brushed the Turks aside, regarding them as mere "bandits" in spite of their successes at Silistria and the lower Danube.
It was the first major war to make use of the train, the telegraph and a professional press. The presence of the latter created such enduring legends as The Charge of the Light Brigade and The Lady of the Lamp.
Though Russia took the city of Kars in the East, they were losing the war on the Crimea. Nicholas died and Alexander II arrived on the throne seeking peace. This came in 1856 with the Treaty of Paris, which freed the Danubian principalities and declared the Black Sea open to international commercial shipping but closed to all naval vessels. The Ottomans had suvived none the worse for wear. However, the real winners were the Western European powers.
Sultan Abdul Aziz arrived on the throne in 1861 but his anti-reform policies led to massive debt, famine and eventually insolvency. This resulted in the formation of the Young Turks, the first political party in Ottoman history, who sought a constitutional government synthesized with Islamic values. Among its leaders was Namik Kemal who became a political prisoner because of his nationalist writings.
It also led to revolt in the Balkans, aided and abetted by Russia. A massacre of Muslims in Bulgaria led to a massacre of Christian Bulgarians by the Ottoman army.
In 1876 there was a student uprising in Istanbul. Later that same year the Sultan was overthrown in a bloodless coup. His alcoholic brother Murad V replaced him but when news arrived that Abdul Aziz had slit his wrists he suffered a nervous breakdown and was removed. This brought his nephew Abdul Hamid II to the throne and he promptly signed a constitution.
Although the European powers sought a solution to the Balkan question, Britain held out, condemning the "Unspeakable Turk" and looking rather for a means of extending her own influence to the region.
Alexander pledged to defend Slavic Christians. Disreali accused Russia of warmongering and threatened to support the Turks against her. In 1877 Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire. Britain stayed out of it.
Russia moved down through the Balkans and Caucasus regions with little difficulty, gaining support from the local Christian populations along the way, and soon occupied parts of European Turkey and eastern Anatolia.
The tide turned with the introduction of Mehmet Ali to the Ottoman cause. Though outnumbered two to one, his men were equipped with US rifles that were superior to the Russian guns. They drove the invaders back across the Balkans - twice, finally routing them. In Britain the "Unspeakable Turk" was now being championed as that "brave fighter of the bulldog breed."
The tide turned again as winter set in. The Russians were better prepared and gained the upper hand, finally re-taking Plevna, then charging on to Sofia, as well as Armenia in the east. Eventually Alexander marched on Istanbul itself. This prompted Britain to belatedly send a few warships into the Marmara as a show of support for the Turks.
With the Russians at their gates the Ottomans agreed to a treaty that was excessively generous to Russian interests. Bulgaria, Montenegro and Serbia were transformed into enlarged independent nations, Romania also gained independence (but as a Latin nation was not enlarged), and Bosnia received a degree of autonomy.
The remaining European powers were understandably alarmed, discerning in this the emergence of a Slavic Eastern Bloc fully capable of threatening the West. They succeeded at the Treaty of Berlin in having the Bulgarian super state chopped in half, with Istanbul retaining control of the lower half.
The Bulgarians in the 1880s united and claimed independence anyway, upsetting both Russia and the Ottomans, although the Ottomans did not react. Abdul Hamid II was turning his back on Europe, and withal allowing Africa to slip away. France assumed a protectorate over Tunisia and with England moved in on bankrupt Egypt (England would later occupy Egypt by force). Abdul turned instead to the Islamic world, in which his empire remained the dominant force.
The Armenian independence movement provided him with a pretext for rekindling Islamic fanatacism. When the Armenian Christians became too animated for his liking, he sent in his troops to massacre them - in liaison with Kurdish tribesmen. By the time they were finished, scores of thousands of Armenians had been butchered in eastern Anatolia.
The following year an aborted attempt at a terrorist attack by Armenian activists led to further slaughter in the streets of Istanbul. Now the European powers delivered an ultimatum to the Sultan. He complied in so far as the killing stopped. But the ensuing inquiry was a sham. For all their bluster, the European powers took no action against the Ottomans.
Abdul Hamid was not enitrely finished with Europe. In 1897 Cretan unrest led to the 30 day war in which the Ottomans routed the Greeks. This, and similar turmoil in Macedonia, was the beginning of a division between the European powers that would ultimately lead to two world wars. Germany and Austria backed the Turks but France, Russia and England sided with Greece. The latter trio in fact forced the Sultan to give up Crete, which was, afterall, 90% Greek, though it had not known independence since the Romans had arrived 1900 years earlier.
The Young Turk revival and military unrest in Thrace at the beginning of the 20th century forced Abdul Hamid to yield and parliament was restored in 1908. The following year there was a coup by Islamic fundamentalists, and an accompanying massacre of Armenian Christians in the south, with the Sultan himself implicated. The military ousted the coup leaders and sent the Sultan into exile.
Thus was the arrival onto the political scene of Mustafa Kemal, the man the world would come to know as Ataturk. He served during this time as chief of staff under Commandant Shevket Pasha. Shevket ruled for two years as military dictator while sowing the seeds of a democratic empire
There were elections in 1912, with much talk of curruption, resulting in a landslide victory to Shevket's party - though he subsequently resigned as a result of the problems in Albania. The democratic empire's first test came with Italian claims on Tripoli. War broke out with the Italians victorious, notwithstanding some stout resistance by Arab tribesmen within Lybia itself.
At the same time, the Ottomans went to war with the Balkan league (1st Balkan War) and, divided, weakened and ill-prepared, they were defeated in a six week blitzkrieg. They lost Salonika after 500 years unbroken occupation. A 1913 treaty signing was disrupted by a coup (Shevket, back in charge, then removed again) in Istanbul and war resumed, with the Ottomans suffering the further loss of Adrianople and, in fact, most of their scant remaining European territory, leaving Istanbul itself as practically the north-western boundary of the empire.
However, civil war erupted among their conquerers, in which the enlarged Bulgaria was defeated by Greece and Serbia, allowing the Ottomans to sneak back and reclaim Adrianople. They managed to retain the city when the next treaty was signed. But Greece held on to Salonika (Ataturk's own home-town).
At the outbreak of WWI in 1914 Britain confiscated two Ottoman warships which were in its waters for repairs. This angered the Turks, who then gave shelter, in the Dardanelles, to two German warships being pursued by the British. Those ships, and the senior members of their crew, were integrated into the Ottoman navy, while the British naval force in the Porte was dismissed.
Churchill, Lord of the Admiralty, wanted to attack the Ottomans pronto but was overruled. Instead, without provokation, a German led Ottoman squadron bombarded Russian ports in the Black Sea. Russia, England and France declared war on the Ottomans. The Turks fared badly, with a disastrous winter campaign in the Caucasus and a failed attempt to retake Egypt. The Churchill plan was revisited, only Kitchener insisted on a land invasion rather than by sea. Finding themselves up against the formidable Mustafa Kemal, ironically one of the few high profile Turks to have opposed allegiance with Germany, the allies were twice driven back into the Aegean and finally forced to withdraw from a battle which had been ill-conceived and excessively costly in terms of lives to both sides.
The Russians had been making inroads in the Black Sea, but this was checked by the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. Although the Ottomans survived there, they lost Iraq to the British and suffered an Arab uprising and mass desertions within their own ranks. Mustafa Kemal held out in Palestine and, in fact, finished the war as the only undefeated Ottoman leader.
When the victorious allies partitioned the empire, leaving the Turks with a mere chunk of Anatolia, it was Kemal who rallied his compatriots.
Firstly they overthrew and exiled the last Sultan, Mehmed VI, then they drove the occupying Greeks back out into the Aegean Sea. A new international peace conference recognized the Turkish boundaries we know today, and in 1923 Ataturk founded the Turkish Republic, moving its capital to Ankara.
This occurred under the military leadership of Enver Pasha, one of the three Young Turk leaders who came to power with the 1913 coup. During the war Armenian Turks sided with the Russians and committed a massacre at Van. In response around one million Armenians were deported by force with approximately half perishing in the process. After the war the Young Turk leaders were sent into exile, all to die violent deaths.
Ataturk became first president of the Turkish Republic, introducing astonishing reforms aimed at secularization, Europeanization and, ultimately, modernization. This included universal suffrage, prohibition of more conservative forms of Muslim dress, and the conversion of the alphabet from Arabic to Latin.
End
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